American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter

by Z. Yuejun (Editor), S. Christie (Editor)

Overview

American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounteroffers a framework for understanding the variety of imagined encounters by eight different American poets with their imagined 'Chinese' subject. The method is historical and materialist, insofar as the contributors to the volume read the claims of specific poems alongside the actual and tumultuous changes China faced between 1911 and 1979. Even where specific poems are found to be erroneous, the contributors to the volume suggest that each of the poets attempted to engage their 'Chinese' subject with a degree of commitment that presaged imaginatively China's subsequent dominance. The poems stand as unique artifacts, via proxy and in the English language, for the rise of China in the American imagination. The audience of the volume is international, including the growing number of scholars and graduate students in Chinese universities working on American literature and comparative cultural studies, as well as already established commentators and students in the west.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230391710
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	10/31/2012
Edition description:	2012
Pages:	197
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stuart Christie; Hong Kong Baptist University Chung Ling; Hong Kong Baptist University Li Jing; Hong Kong Baptist University Lim Lee Ching; SIM University, Singapore Luo Lianggong; Central China Normal University James I. McDougall; American University of Kuwait Christopher A. Shinn; Howard University Su Hui; Central China Normal University Zhang Yuejun;Central South University

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Zhang Yuejun Stuart Christie 1

Part I Entry

1 "Between Walls": So Much Depends on Chinese Immigrant Poetry in Defining the Modernist Age Christopher A. Shinn 19

2 H. T. Tsiang's Poems of the Chinese Revolution and Transpacific Bridges to a Radical Past James I. McDougall 49

Part II Influence

3 Usurious Translation: From Chinese Character to Western Ideology in Pound's Confucian "Terminology" Stuart Christie 77

4 Wandering Lost upon the Mountains of Our Choice: W. H. Auden's "In Time of War" Lim Lee Ching 95

5 China and the Political Imagination in Langston Hughes's Poetry Luo Lianggong 111

Part III Exit

6 Allen Ginsberg's "China" Su Hui 123

7 Grievance of the Gendered Self: Chinese Guiyuan Elements in Carolyn Kizer's Poems Li Jing 133

8 Jane Hirshfield's Poetic Voice and Zen Meditation Chung Ling 153

Note on Contributors 179

Index 183

Index of Chinese Sources and Uses 195

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'China talks back!: American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter takes on American/Eurocentric transnationalism and explores the ways China has been ventriloquized, not to say Orientalized . . . by such key American poets as Williams, Pound, Auden, Hughes, Ginsberg, and alternative poetics in the Angel Island poems. This anthology marks a turning point for Chinese/American comparative poetics.' - Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania

'Finally we have a statement by Chinese-based scholars about their culture's relationship to twentieth-century American poetry. The book is intricately structured to cover three periods of interaction - the high-modern construction of 'Chineseness,' the West's interest in China's revolutionary ferment, and the period where Chinese hegemony enjoins dialogue and mutual learning. Most striking is these scholars'commitment to a historicism capable of resisting Western categories and yet reconfiguring our mutual imaginings of the future we are creating together.' - Charles Altieri, Rachael Anderson Stageberg Professor of English, University of California

Editorial Reviews

'China talks back!: American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter takes on American/Eurocentric transnationalism and explores the ways China has been ventriloquized, not to say Orientalized . . . by such key American poets as Williams, Pound, Auden, Hughes, Ginsberg, and alternative poetics in the Angel Island poems. This anthology marks a turning point for Chinese/American comparative poetics.' - Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania

'Finally we have a statement by Chinese-based scholars about their culture's relationship to twentieth-century American poetry. The book is intricately structured to cover three periods of interaction - the high-modern construction of 'Chineseness,' the West's interest in China's revolutionary ferment, and the period where Chinese hegemony enjoins dialogue and mutual learning. Most striking is these scholars' commitment to a historicism capable of resisting Western categories and yet reconfiguring our mutual imaginings of the future we are creating together.' - Charles Altieri, Rachael Anderson Stageberg Professor of English, University of California

From the Publisher