Shu Ting: Selected Poems
Edited by Eva Hung
1994
xii + 134 pages
ISBN 962-7255-14-9
China's leading woman poet, Shu Ting worked in the countryside until 1973, returning to the city to work on construction sites and in factories. In spite of all this, her firm faith in the human spirit led her to poetry. Her pure style and mature voice found a ready response among a generation shaped by the experiences of the Cultural Revolution.
The poems included in this first collection of Shu Ting's work in English span her career, amply demonstrating her poetic gifts.
'...Shu Ting is a poet of sorrow and a lyric wistfulness dominates her work. In early poems this sadness is often the expression of an adolescent sensibility; in later work she explores a more abstract, broadly existential melancholy. Another element of her mature writing is a powerful feminist consciousness.
Selected Poems also confirms her credo that "Writing poetry is instinct / being called a poet is pure chance." '