Forbidden Games and Video Poems: The Poetry of Yang Mu and Lo Ch'ing (review)

REVIEWS Joseph R. Allen, translator and commentator. Forbidden Games and Video Poems: The Poetry ofYangMu and Lo Ch'ing Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1993. xii, 433 pp. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press Unusually, the publisher's own description of this book is sober, precise, and comprehensive. As a reviewer I may be thought to be getting off cheaply by quoting it, but because it is such a refreshing change from the output ofthe mutual admiration society that academia has become, and because I could not do better myself, I will go ahead: Two contemporary poets from Taiwan, Yang Mu (pen name for Wang Ching-hsien, b. 1940) and Lo Ch'ing (pen name for Lo Ch'ing-che, b. 1948) are represented in this bilingual edition ofChinese poetry ranging from the romantic to the post modern. Both poets were involved in the selection of poems for this volume, the first edition in any language oftheir selected work. Their backgrounds, literary styles, and professional lives are profiled and compared by the translator in critical essays that show howYang and Lo represent basic directions in modern Chinese poetics and how they have contributed to the definition of modernism and post modernism in China. The book's organization reflects each poet's method of composition. Yang's poems are chronologically arranged, as his poetry tends to describe a narrative line that closely parallels his own biography. Lo's poems, which explore a world of concept and metaphor, are grouped by theme. Although each poet has a range of poetic voices, Yang's work can be considered the peak of high modernism in Chinese poetry, while Lo's more problematic work suggests the direction of new explorations in the art. In this way the two poets are mutually illuminating. Each group of poems is prefaced by an "illustration" that draws from another side ofthe poet's intellectual life. For Yang, who is a professor of comparative literature at the University ofWashington, these are excerpts from his academic work (written under the name C. H. Wang) in English. The poems by Lo, a well-known painter living in Taiwan, are illustrated by five of his own ink paintings. Ioseph R. Allen is associate professor of Chinese language and literature at Washington University, St. Louis. He is the autíior oí In the Voice ofOthers: Chinese MusicBureau Poetry. To this, one willingly adds compliments on the design and production of the book, especially the attractive typefaces for both English and Chinese matching Reviews 55 texts, the translator's pleasant and well-pitched introductory profile and ambient remarks, and his intelligent and revealing critical essay on the language and character ofhis two subjects' poetry. Whereas neither poet is ofsuch towering stature as to justify by himselfa whole book oftranslations, together they give value for money, and should for their part be satisfied that they have been given a fair crack ofthe whip. Joseph Allen's essay on the pair's poetics makes much ofthe difficulty of understanding the originals: in Yang Mu's case, to follow what he is saying, in Lo Ch'ing's case to know what he is talking about. Given that the book is a book of translations and not ofexegesis, it would be vain to expect Allen to shed light on these questions. According to the contemporary prevailing heresy, the poem is whatever the reader takes it to be. Ifasked directly the poets would probably "look right and left and speak ofother things." Perhaps for that reason Allen "did not talk to the poets about the meaning or interpretation ofany oftheir poems." Yet to me this is carrying self-denial too far. As distinct from giving the whole game away, an author can and should volunteer to the translator an explanation ofwhat he meant by a particular word or phrase and what the logical (or illogical) connection is between one phrase and another; that is to say, he should clear up semantic questions while he can, because the translator cannot always reflect ambiguity by ambiguity: he has to choose an interpretation. And there is no lack ofoccasion for choice in this anthology. My guess is that one ofthe reasons Allen...