A Free Life (73 page)
Screw the memoir! It's a kiddie form. I don't mind insulting someone by my writing. A poet is supposed to outrage people. Gail Upchurch spoke as if I hadn't known I was waging a losing battle, and she didn't know I already accepted myself as a loser who has nothing to lose anymore. To write poetry is to exist.
June 13, 1998
Chinese poetry does not have the concept of the Muse. As a result, the poetic speech can originate only from the human domain.
This is an interesting phenomenon, which marks the fundamental difference between Chinese poetry and English poetry. Perhaps this can explain why Chinese poetry is more earthy and bound to the affairs of this world. Should I believe in the Muse? I don't know, but I can see that such a belief may empower a poet. Still, how can we be sure what work has divine sponsorship and what does not? Even if we are sure, can't our convictions be but illusions? In other words, how can we trust our own visions? Probably to stay within the human domain is a better way to go.
July 6, 1998
Tu Fu wrote, "Writing is a matter of a thousand years; / My heart knows the gain and the loss." It seems he was quite certain that some of his poems would last a millennium. Although he is a great poet, if not the greatest in Chinese, his confidence verges on megalomania. The mortality of one's poetry is contingent on many factors mostly beyond the poet's control. By contrast, Horace said he hoped his work would survive himself by a century. This is more human, aware of his finitude.
July 20, 1998
Talked with Dick last night. He is bored in Iowa and said he'd try to see if he could work out a deal with his university so that he could teach only one semester a year. He misses New York, especially the nightlife. He is opposed to the idea of self-publishing, because a vanity press book is looked down upon by professional poets. Screw the professionals! William Blake published Songs of Innocence and of Experience at his own expense; so did A. E. Housman with A Shropshire Lad. I should not exclude self-publishing once I have enough poems for a book.
August 22, 1998
Fives poems were rejected by Poetry, but the editor wrote an encouraging note, saying he saw "a glimmer of talent in every poem." He seemed to address me as a young woman. I've been revising the poems and will send them elsewhere soon.
September 6, 1998
Too many people call themselves poets in the U.S., just as too many people call themselves artists-here even a con man is called con artist. I don't believe in the "art" of poetry. For me it's just a craft, not very much different from carpentry or masonry. It's a kind of work that can keep me emotionally balanced and functioning better as a human being. So I write only because I have to.
September 27, 1998
Gail Upchurch wrote again and said she still couldn't see any progress in my poetry. She quoted Yeats, who in a letter declares that no poet who doesn't write in his mother tongue can write with music and strength. I was disheartened by the quotation, as I do love some of Yeats's poems. I felt as if a brick had hit me in the face. On second thought, I believe Yeats's statement might be true only of his time. Nowadays TV and radio are everywhere, and you can hear native English speakers talk every day, so it may be less difficult for a writer to choose to write in his adopted tongue.
On the other hand, Gail Upchurch did raise a serious question. She wrote: "The reason I have advised you to write prose is that the main function of prose is to tell a story. But poets should have a different kind of ambition, i.e., to enter into the language they use. Can you imagine your work becoming part of our language?"
I have no answer to that xenophobic question, which ignores the fact that the vitality of English has partly resulted from its ability to assimilate all kinds of alien energies. From now on, I won't send my work to Arrows again and will avoid Gail Upchurch, that killjoy. She even said, "So don't continue until you learn how to rhyme 'orange.' "
October 2, 1998
Today I heard on NPR that Linda Dewit had passed away two weeks ago. At the news I wasn't sad somehow, probably because I felt her poetry became more precious to me. I went to Borders and bought two of her books, though I already had her Collected Poems. I'm glad that her death in a way consecrated her, and now to me she exists solely as a genuine spirit embodied in her work. Had I met her in person, I might have been disappointed, just as I was by Edward Neary. It's better this way, letting Linda Dewit's poetry shape her image and keep it intact in my mind. A poet's work should always be better than the poet. That's why one writes-to make something better than oneself.
October 30, 1998
Sent out five poems to the Kenyon Review this morning.
These days I have tried to memorize a few lines by Auden every day. Sadly, my memory is no longer as strong as ten years ago. Today I can hardly recall what I learned yesterday. Probably my creative powers have passed the peak and I started too late. Yet for me there is only trying, and I will be happy if I can work this motel job for many years.
POEMS
BY
NAN WU
Revelation
Suddenly he saw his mother's ugly face after seeing her smile for thirty years.
Suddenly he heard his mother's monstrous voice, having remembered all her lullabies.
Suddenly he found his mother's secret cookhouse stocked with human flesh and blood.
For the first time he tasted tears of rage and hated the nickname she called him.
He soon left for a distant place, where he has lived secluded.
A Contract
Long ago I was promised a contract. This made me feel rich and brave. In return I pledged all my faith, eager to serve and praise. I was a normal child, sure about what to love and what to hate.
When I grew up I was given the contract itself.
In it was the map of a whole country,
there was no mention of money or property,
but it guaranteed me a happy future.
I knew nobody merited my envy
and nothing else could make me succeed.
I took my contract to another land,
where I showed it at an international bank.
People cringed and whispered.
A large man burped and said to me,
"Sir, this doesn't mean anything."
Choking back tears, I muttered, "Thank you."
Homeland
You packed a pouch of earth into your baggage as a bit of your homeland. You told your friend: "In a few years I'll be back like a lion. There's no other place I can call home and wherever I go I'll carry our country with me. I'll make sure my children speak our language, remember our history, and follow our customs. Rest assured, you will see this same man, made of loyalty, bringing back gifts and knowledge from other lands."
You won't be able to go back.
Look, the door has closed behind you.
Like others, you too are expendable to
a country never short of citizens.
You will toss in sleepless nights,
confused, homesick, and weeping in silence.
Indeed, loyalty is a ruse
if only one side intends to be loyal.
You will have no choice but to join the refugees
and change your passport.
Eventually you will learn:
your country is where you raise your children,
your homeland is where you build your home.
My Pity
I pity those who worship power and success. When they are weak they close their borders, which when they are strong they expand. They let a one-eyed ruler lead them into a tumbling river, where they are told that under the water stepping-stones form a straight path to the other shore.
I pity those whose wisdom is all worldly. They take the death of the young calmly, but when the old die, they will collapse, pounding their chests and wailing to heaven as if they were willing to go with the dead. Their sense of life is circular, so their solution to crises is to wait, wait for the wheel of fate to turn. "History," they're fond of saying, "will sort out things by itself."
I pity those who love security and unity.
They're content to live in cellars where
food and drinks are provided for them.
Their lungs are unused to fresh air
and their eyes bleary in sunlight.
They believe the worst life
is better than a timely death.
Their heaven is a banquet table.
Their salvation depends on a powerful man.
Spring
In the late afternoon a chorus of birds drifts
and sways a boat brimming with hopes,
forgotten but still floating in the bay.
If your heart is full of longing for
a distant trip, it's time to go.
You must set out alone-
expect no company but stars.
In the early twilight golden clouds billow, suggesting a harvest, remote yet plausible. Perhaps your soul is suddenly seized by a melody that brings back a promise never fulfilled, or a love that blossoms only in thought, or a house, partly built, abandoned…
If you want to sing, sing clearly.
Let grief embolden your song.
A Change
You didn't come. I was there alone watching drenched dragonflies cling to the grapes under your trellis, listening to a flute that trilled away in the shuttered nursery.
Alone I stood in the rain, crooning
to the wind, and let my songs
be carried off by the wings
that still cleaved the hazy evening.
I saw my words fall on a mountainside
where trees and grass were dying.
Now and again
your little gate would wave
as if to say "Go away."
Afterward, weaned from love and sick of everything, I thought I would stop singing. Yet words lined up, kept coming, though in my voice I heard a different ring.
A Love Bird
How I would like to be a bird
kept in your cage of love. You called me Sparrow but preferred
an eagle or a dove.
You shooed me off your cozy eaves and made me use my wings.
How I cried for fear, for relief. You merely said "Poor thing."
Across oceans and continents I've traveled, wrestling winds.
My heart, homesick, often regrets my strong and spacious wings.
I've lost my sparrow's melody and cannot find your house.
Many times you must have seen me as one born in the clouds.
Pomegranates
Another rain will burst them- full of teeth, they will grin through the tiny leaves
that used to conceal their cheeks. I'll take a photo of my pomegranates for you, the only person
I care to show. Like others
you craved the fruit
so much, you overlooked
the crimson blossoms wounded by worms and winds. You could not imagine
some of them would swell
into such heavy pride.
I can tell you, they are sour.
A Good-bye in January 1987
"All aboard!" cried the train attendant.
My father was holding my three-year-old son
to watch me leaving for another continent.
"Good-bye, Taotao." I waved, but my child was silent staring at me with a sullen face,
his tears trickling down.
If only I could have brought him along!
The wheels hissed, about
to grind. "No good-bye,"
he cried finally, "no good-bye, Mama."
I forced a smile, then climbed
the ladder, stabbed by pain.
The village platform began to fall away,
blurred, and disappeared in the plain.
Since then his tears, mingled with mine, have often soaked my bad dreams, although he did join me in '89.
I swear I'll never say good-bye
to my son again, not until
he graduates from Parkview High.
The Donkey
Mama, do you remember the donkey
who collapsed on the street that afternoon?
And the overturned cart, its wheel still moving,
mussels and clams scattered in heaps all around? He lay in a ditch, his belly sweating, heaving, while blood flowed from his mouth.
The old one-eyed driver was kicking him
and yelling, "Get up, you beast!"
Only a long ear twitched, as if to say "I'm trying."
I swear, he was too tired to get on his feet. Unlike a horse playing sick, he was too weak to pretend.
Mama, I can still see that mountain of seafood, the driver standing on it and cracking his whip.
My Doves
All night long I hear my doves cooing to tell me there's a snowstorm gathering. Their feathers, once intensely white, are gray and tattered, though the whistles I tied to them eleven years ago still scatter notes of brass when they fly.
They tremble a little from cold.
Their short bills having lost the jadelike translucency
are more fragile than before.
Who feeds them now?
Under whose eaves is their cote?
Do they still go to the aspen grove to look for worms?
Do the cats still attack them and steal their young?
Time and again they seem to cry, "Nan, Nan, come and take us away." They make my morning blue, bluer than a freezing dusk.
All day long I see the shadows of their wings flitting about- through my lawn, along the asphalt, across the walls of the dining hall, on the kitchen floor, around my wok…
Groundhog Hour
As the groundhog enters our yard
all the noise ceases in our house.
I dare not raise my voice