Words Well Put: Visions of Poetic Competence in the Chinese Tradition (review)

Living in an age in which poetry is seen as the near epitome of irrelevance, it is good to be reminded that, for thousands of years and for a large part of the literate populace, poetry mattered very much. In Words Well Put: Visions of Poetic Competence in the Chinese Tradition, Graham Sanders focuses on the utility of poetic discourse: its ability, when employed competently, to affect ‘the attitude and behavior of another person in order to achieve a desired end.’ Tracing changing notions of poetic competence in texts spanning a period of over fifteen hundred years, Sanders demonstrates the important roles poetry played in such diverse arenas as interstate diplomacy and romantic love.

After establishing his theoretical groundwork in a brief introduction, Sanders turns to the earliest ‘poem-bearing’ narratives in the tradition, found in the Zuo Tradition, covering events from the Eastern Zhou period (770–256 bce). Rather than showing people deploying original poetic compositions, these narratives portray statesmen performing earlier poetic works from the collection known simply as the Poems. Sanders convincingly argues that, whether ‘offering’ or ‘citing,’ the ‘Traditionalist’ (Sanders’s more accurate term for the figures often referred to as ‘Confucians’) court advisors used poetic performance to spur their powerful audience towards appropriate actions. This use of poetry was not simple quotation; it was a complex mode of application and interpretation that defined cultural competency in ways that affirmed the social necessity of the Traditionalists themselves.

Turning next to the Western Han (206 bce –23 ce), Sanders demonstrates how song performances and the narrative frames in which the Han History presents them exist in a reciprocal relationship where the songs provide emotional insights into the historical figures and the narratives create more meaningful contexts for the songs. Unlike the narratives in the Zuo Tradition, those in the Han History involve the creation of new poems. The historians use the conceit of spontaneous production to show the intent and character of important personages. These would not always be evident from a pure narration of events, which often represented the failure rather than fruition of ambitions.

With the fall of the Han, the explicit violence that underlay many displays of poetic competence in earlier periods was replaced with skirmishes over the symbolic power earned by displays of cultural competence. This competence encompasses a wider array of performances than we find in the previous chapters. In the Six Dynasties period it was not only appropriate use of the Poems that put one at an advantage, but also quotation from non-canonical works of poetry, spontaneously producing one’s own verses, and demonstrating proper appreciation of and critical judgment on the poetic works of others. As the chapter title ‘Playing the Game’ suggests, there is a self-contained and almost whimsical quality to the competition in this period, yet for the players themselves, the stakes were no less significant.

In the final two chapters Sanders focuses on a single work, the Tang dynasty collection of poem-bearing narratives known as the Storied Poems (Benshi shi). The fourth chapter is concerned with the compilation of this work and the motivations and ideas of its author, Meng Qi. Sanders carefully demonstrates how Meng’s theoretical ideas about poetic production and reception grow out of and depart from earlier models. Meng’s ultimate goal, Sanders explains, is not simply to put together an anthology of poems or especially fine lines, but rather to use narratives to bring out what is most important and significant in the poems or lines he quotes. Yet as Sanders makes clear, the actual poetic practices that Meng depicts in his collection are rarely a perfect fit with the theoretical ideas he articulates in his preface. The narratives in question demonstrate more concern with what poems can do than with what they ought to be. In the final chapter Sanders translates and analyzes a number of entries from the Benshi shi, showing how questions of poetic...