poets-from-china

"宁為太平犬，莫作亂离人！"

"The stronger the poet is, the more he revels in dancing in shackles, and the better he dances."

"On 15 July 1946 he addressed a public meeting in memory of Li Gongpu, a Democratic League leader shot by the Guomindang secret police: "Reactionaries, you killed one man, but hundreds and thousands carry on ... We have the martyr's spirit!" Later that same day Wen himself was assassinated."

"This eerie, silent night, this round of perfect peace, This song of gratitude that rises in my throat – And at once the song of thanks changes to a curse. Silent night, I cannot, will not, accept your bribe! Who can be happy with a peace inside four walls? My world is greater; it reaches far beyond. These walls cannot keep out the roar of battle. Can they still the furious beating of my heart? [...] Good Fortune, I cannot accept your bribe; My world cannot be locked inside these walls. Listen! Cannons! Roaring spirits of the dead! Silent night, how can you hope to still my pounding heart?"

"How sad it is to be a woman! Nothing on earth is held so cheap."

"Contentment with poverty is Fortune's best gift: Riches and Honour are the handmaids of Disaster."

"His love is distant as the stars in Heaven, Yet the sunflower bends toward the sun."

"A single note from the lute, however beautiful, is not music."

"It is like following a branch to find the trembling leaves, like following a stream to find the spring."

"When cutting an axe handle with an axe, surely the model is at hand."

"The sleeves of dancers move with the melodies; the voices of singers rise and fall with the music. P'ien the Wheelwright tried to explain it, but couldn't; nor can the artificial flowers of critics describe it."

"Through letters there is no road too distant to travel, no idea too confusing to be ordered. It comes like rain from clouds; it renews the vital spirit. Inscribed on bronze and marble, it honours every virtue; it sings through flute and strings, and every day is made newer."

"However the sentences branch and spread, they grow out of well-placed phrases."

"There are no new ideas, only those which rhyme with certain classics."

"He learns to recite the classics; he sings in the clear fragrance of the old masters He explores the treasures of the classics where form and content join."

"We carry the bucket from the well, but it is soon again empty."

"This may be easy to know, but it is difficult to put in practice."

"The dark inside of the mind lies hidden; thoughts must be brought like a child from the womb, terrified and screaming."

"We hear the jade bell's laughter and think it laughs at us; for the poet there is terror in the dust."

"Caught between the unborn and the living, the writer struggles to maintain both depth and surface."

"Knowing order is like opening a dam in the river. Not knowing is like grabbing the tail to direct the head of the dragon."

"I consider myself a Buddhist practitioner, but still a beginner, even though I’ve been meditating on and off for many years now. When I was growing up, no one in my household was religious. I’d always been curious about religion, probably because it was bound up for me with questions about how to live as a person when you’re granted such a brief stretch of time. I remember picking up a Buddhist book during my senior year of high school, when it was dawning on me that I would soon experience a new level of autonomy."

"Speaking and writing in English carried with it the anxiety of being betrayed by one’s usage mistakes and lack of fluency; this was no doubt reinforced by the linking of academic success to facility with speech and writing. At the same time that I began learning English, my Mandarin slowed in development, because I wasn’t using it outside of the domestic sphere. To this day, even though I enrolled in a year of intensive Mandarin study in college, my Mandarin is quite stunted. I’ve lost most of the ability to read and write in it, sadly."

"Buddhist philosophy made so much sense to me when I encountered it. It also upended so much of my thinking — about the self, about suffering, about the mental barriers I’d drawn up my whole life. I can’t understate the freedom that comes — at any age, but especially at that young age — with understanding there is no need to chase after anything, that one innately contains a vast understanding and wisdom. The freedom and balm of knowing that the root of so much suffering is also an illusion: You are not separate from any other thing."

"I gravitate toward language that radiates a certain energy for me."

"I’m interested in teasing out the moral complications in travel, but I’m not claiming any moral authority on the subject. Traveling, and the estrangement that comes with it — both physical and mental — can be deeply meaningful in many regards. That’s certainly been true for me. Being unsettled and departing from the familiar encourages a certain kind of attention and awakening of curiosity that helps us reach outside of our own skins, and in doing so, makes us consider not only what is unfamiliar to us in our surroundings, but what is unfamiliar to us in ourselves."

"一样是月明， 一样是隔山灯火， 满天的星 只使人不见， 梦似的挂起。"

"Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement that comes with the process of dislocating from a familiar context. I gather energy from this kind of movement, this estranging and unsettling, and I welcome it precisely because it’s conducive to examination, interrogation, reordering. Travel, imaginative or physical, can sharpen perception and force a measuring of distance and difference."

"I try to distance myself from systems of literary production and strains of thought that place primacy on publishing and publishing quickly. Ironically, one way to keep myself going is to surrender completely to the fear that I won’t write again, and try to access some recessed zone where any need or ambition to write poems, or to write for others’ eyes, falls away. Once I’ve been emptied of those needs, I find I can allow myself to be filled once more. Reading invigorating work, putting myself in the presence of formidable voices and minds, or submerging myself in slow films usually helps, too."

"My initial impulse is to say that the poems aren’t “about” me, but that response plays into the faulty assumption that poems whose primary aim might be self-disclosure or testimony are somehow less aesthetically rigorous or energizing. I don’t buy that, really. At the same time, the “I” in these poems, while they might share autobiographical details with the person that wrote them, aren’t “about” me insofar as the speakers are fashioned, dramatized, contextually bound. I invoke them and write into them to better serve the poems and their modes, registers, and textures. Many of the poems take up self-interrogation, but I’m not interested in getting the plot details exactly right. The self is a fiction."

"众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，那人却在，灯火阑珊处。"

"以為舊詩適合於表達某種情感,二十余年來,我恰有此種情感,故發而為詩;詩有時自己形成,不用我做."

"I would want a dreaming machine that dreams up the most beautiful dreams and then show me exactly how to make them a reality…This is the eternal conundrum: the visualization of desires (dreams), and then the dissonance between that and reality."

"The ambiguity when the performance of self becomes self-destructive, or when performance of self becomes pathological. That gray area interests me as a poet because it’s so wrapped up in everyday life now that it’s almost mundane. So much of this performance is tied to feelings of worth and value; in essence, it becomes ongoing, an entire existence all on its own…"

"Visibility is not enough—we need actual complexity. Visibility can quickly turn into invisibility when the stories that make us visible actually reduce our humanity and complexity. This is especially true if we prop up token stories—tokenism is a big problem when it comes to the film industry—or any industry…"

"History books are necessary in order for us to know and perceive the truth, and there’s always a question of perspective and who gets to tell the story…"

"勢運天成一線牽，人生際遇係因緣； 悲歡散合平常待，事起非能任自旋。"

"萬物依存大自然，平衡動態順其緣。 栽花植樹維佳境，繁殖新生種福田。"

"日月催人老，今生有幾何？ 真言誠可貴，感語不嫌多。"

"十月懷胎孕育身，悉心養護遂成人。 微低動物猶爭度，奮力求生勿化塵。"

"暴雨烏雲久必晴，夜深輾轉是天明。 面臨困境憑心力，度過難關一片清。"

"枷鎖纏身困擾滋，紅塵瑣事縛如絲。 勸君滌慮尋方向，可待雲開日照時。"

"夏去秋來繼又冬，人生無處不相逢。 寬留後路尋階下，一點恩情記在胸。"

"持槍作盜進行侵，利筆文章誨殺淫。 技藝人才培不易，植因造業孽緣深。"

"海内存知己， 天涯若比邻。"

"紅酥手，黃藤酒， 滿城春色宮墻柳。 東風惡，歡情薄， 一杯愁緒，幾年離索，錯，錯，錯。萅如舊，人空瘦， 淚痕紅浥鮫綃透。 桃花落，閒池閣， 山盟雖在，錦書難托，莫，莫，莫。"

"春风又绿江南岸，明月何时照我还？"

""Zhengchun said, “I’d like to survey a great many books.” “Don’t do that,” Zhu Xi said. “Read one book thoroughly, then read another one. If you confusedly try to advance on several fronts, you will end up with difficulties. It’s like archery. If you are strong enough for a five-pint bow, use a four-pint one. You will be able to draw it all the way and still have strength left over. Students today do not measure their own strength when reading books. I worry that we cannot manage what we already have set ourselves.” 20:464"

""A student asked, “How can a person develop his sincerity and reverence and get rid of his desires?” Zhu Xi responded, “These are the end-points. Sincerity requires getting rid of all sorts of falseness. Reverence requires getting rid of all sorts of laziness. Desires should be blocked.” 13:246"

""A student asked, “What should I do about being confused by different theories when I read?” Zhu Xi answered, “Start with an open mind, then read one theory. Read one view before reading another. After you have read them again and again, what is right and wrong, useful and useless, will become apparent of itself. The process can be compared to trying to discover whether a person is good or bad. You observe him wherever he goes, notice what he says or does, and then know if he is good or bad.” He also said, “You simply must have an open mind,” and “Wash away your old opinions to let new ideas in.” 12:211"