Shu Ting: Selected Poems
Shu Ting: Selected Poems
Edited by Eva Hung
1994
xii + 134 pages
ISBN 962-7255-14-9
Shu Ting became associated with the Misty group when her poems appeared in the underground literary magazine Today. Her voice gently articulated an emotional awareness which a generation dominated by the Cultural Revolution easily identified with. In the mid 1980s, Shu Ting began to experiment with modernist imagery. Her poetry remains, however, recognizable and distinctly feminine.
The poems included in this first collection of Shu Ting's work in English span her career, amply demonstrating her poetic gifts.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Editor’s Preface — 7
A Dialogue with Shu Ting and Chen Zhongyi — 11
Gifts — 17
A Boat with Two Masts — 19
Goodbye in the Rain — 20
A Boat — 21
When You Walk Beneath My Window — 22
To an Oak — 24
Longing — 26
Two, Maybe Three Different Memories — 27
A roadside encounter — 28
Perhaps — 29
A Late Autumn Evening in Beijing — 30
Assembly Line — 33
Fallen Leaf — 34
Homeward Bound — 36
A Love Song for this Land — 37
Brother, I’m Here — 39
Evening Star — 41
Evening Montage — 44
The Singing Iris — 48
Ah Min in the Café — 58
In Memory of My Late Grandmother — 60
Resurrection — 61
Twelve Nights of the Milky Way (TV Poetry) — 63
July That Year — 85
End of Hibernation — 87
… in between — 89
A Letter to the Guitar Girl — 91
In the Night-club — 93
Husum Game Restaurant — 94
Water Metasequoia — 95
Death of the Monk — 97
The Archaeopteryx — 99
Autumn Thoughts — 100
Derailed — 102
The Sleeping Clock — 103
Where the Soul Dwells — 104
That Primary Colour — 105
“Forget-me-not” — 107
Goodbye, White Handkerchief — 108
A Night at an Inn — 110
Mirror — 112
Waters of Green Lake — 114
Sunset on White Creeper Lake — 117
Curriculum Vitae — 119
A Letter to Second Uncle — 121
The Time of Power Failure — 123
A Style of Playing — 125
Reading at Night — 127
The Age of Autumn — 128
Chen Zhongyi: Afterword—Some Thoughts on Shu Ting’s Poetry — 131
Translators — 135
Review(s)
Review(s)
'…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."'
—World Literature Today
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AUTHOR(s)
Shu Ting was born in 1952 in Jinjiang, Fujian province. Her secondary education was cut short by the Cultural Revolution and she was sent down to work in the poverty-stricken countryside until 1973. On her return to Fujian, she was to work on construction sites and in factories. In spite of her experiences during this time, her firm faith in the human spirit led to poetry.
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TRANSLATOR(s)
Eva Hung
Tao Tao Liu
Gordon Osing & De-an Wu Swihart
Janice Wickeri
Henry Y.H. Zhao & D.E. Pollard