An Interview with Poet Xue Di

By Melissa Clark, Alice James Books

November 2001

To start, could you give us a little background about yourself? Where did you grow up? Where have you lived since leaving China ?

I was born and grew up in Beijing , the capital of China . Beijing now has twelve million people living there. I was invited as a Visiting Scholar by Brown University right after the massacre in Beijing on June fourth 1989 . I have been in residence at Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island for the past twelve years and have traveled extensively in the United States and Europe .

When and why did you start writing poetry? 

When I was a small boy, my parents got divorced. Back then, divorce very rarely happened in mainland China . The government strictly forbade couples to divorce so that they could announce and prove that a socialist society is better than a capitalist one, because people lived better and more harmonious lives then Westerners, and because no one disliked each other or divorced. In school, my classmates thought that I was the cause of my parent's divorce; since no one else's parents were divorced, I must therefore be evil. I was beaten every day after school; I was chased by groups of kids on the streets nearby and forced to fight back to protect myself. In the meantime, both of my parents re-married after their divorce. I was rejected by my new stepmother and stepfather, and so I couldn't live with any of them. I had to live in a dormitory building alone, and take care of my life—myself in fear, humiliation and pain. I was only ten years old.

Then in 1966, the Cultural Revolution spread throughout mainland China . Intellectuals and even common people were humiliated, tortured and killed. People were driven to wild extremes by the belief in communism and turned cunningly and violently against each other. Families fell apart; schools and colleges shut down; books were torn and burned; tradition and morality were stepped on the mud and murdered. The whole country was mad and lost. That was the time that I supposed to enter college, I was supposed to absorb knowledge and cultivate my understanding and spirit to be a decent human being, to be a meaningful person for myself and for society. I was ten when the Cultural Revolution started. The campaign lasted ten years. Ten years of my youth were rudely crushed and destroyed by the society.

That was the path that I traveled in my early years. Those years were full of personal misery within my country's loss and madness. I was crazily reading whatever I could put my hands on to read, whatever I was able to grab for reading. Only reading could carry me away from grief and deep unhappiness in my life, and tremendous confusion and anger toward society.

One day, in the hallway of my apartment building, I found a collection of poems written by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The collection had been thrown away. (People could be sent to labor camps simply because they owned a collection of poems written by foreigners.) I started to read it in the washroom. I had to hide myself from spying neighbors while I was reading foreign literature. For the first time in my life, I heard birds singing; blue waters are circling; people are liking each other and the ocean is romantically and beautifully rolling in my life. For the first time, I sensed love. I felt beloved; I felt that I am not lonely anymore; I felt that the mad society and cruel children and adults were far away from my living. I saw myself laughing while I was reading; tears came out not because of being beaten and abused, but from being moved. For the first time, I appreciated my life without wanting to end it.

I started to write poems. The first one came out at twelve. Since then I have never stopped writing. Poetry saved my life at first. Without reading and writing poetry, I would have perished, physically. And the more I write, the more I understand my life and others, and societies. I live toward being a decent man, to understand the living world in a deep way, that is what poetry is all about. Poetry presents pureness and love; inward vision and kindness; honesty and compassion; the sharp and deep sense of our lives and connections with others, and with societies. So the more I write, the more I come out from my own dark past to a higher state of human consciousness, with light, hope and love in my years, in my spirit.

Who or what would you say influenced or inspired you to start writing? Who are some of the writers that you respected when you first began as a poet?

The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was the first poet to influence my writing. His romantic and profound sense of nature and love; his gift for language and love of life; his ability to transfer everything into heartwarming beauty, that set me on the journey of writing poetry. The reason I could withstand misery and chaos from my early life and environment was because my heart was polished by the beauty and love in poetry.

The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was the second poet who significantly influenced my poetry writing. His sharp vision and expression on darkness, his poignancy and rage on human avarice and sin, his ability to penetrate the dark and reach the bottom of desperation with power, that set me on the journey of displaying power in my poetry writing. My youth provided enough misery as a source for me to emotionally present the darkness and hopelessness of human living; my country had enough ill fortune and horrible crimes on humanity as subjects for me to cry and attack. I learned how to display power in my writing, that act paralleled my long-buried anger and deep sorrow. I studied and researched different writing technologies; organized and arranged words precisely. I believe that is the only way to present the power and beauty of a poem. This writing technology and exercise was also displayed in Charles Bodelaire's poetry writing. By pursuing that, I felt that I gained power in my poetry writing, but I didn't know that I was also sinking: sinking into the thick and springing darkness.

Then there came William Yeats (1865-1939), the Irish poet, who taught me how to rise up from the darkness and depression; how to light living with things long since gone; how to remember and sing from the ruins in our lives, how to point out hope and joy ahead and put human crimes against the spirit behind. He taught me in a beautiful and melodic tone.

Here I am, to understand: you must penetrate darkness of any kind, you have to be that pure and complete to be able to penetrate; and then, you must have love and communication with the roots of societies, and the source of human lives, to empower you to rise, to light the sheer darkness in humans and societies, to grant hope for living. This is what poetry is all about. Beauty is a hope. Compassion is a hope. To sing or to communicate with the self is a hope. Poetry has to complete a procedure: first descent and then ascent. Without descent, there is no power or force in poems; without ascent, there is no spirit, no space for inhalation and no light through long tunnels in our writing, and no feeling of flight.

To also understand: writing technique is the way that you live, is where you choose to live. Technique displays the degree of how sincere and honest you are to living.

How have the personal events in your life found their way into your poetry? Aside from the personal, do you feel that your poetry should serve as a voice for political and cultural awareness, too?

Poetry is the communication between inner experiences and the details of everyday living and the living world. Like a bridge, from emptiness to concreteness and reality to greater emptiness. We listen and perceive when we are on the bridge, we feel the vibration beneath and our lives moving from one end to another. When I listen to what I do, my action and movement become experience. When I'm in great silence, poetry comes forth. Every day is a precise word of a poem. A memorable event becomes a line of a poem. The happiness and sorrow from daily living are all hidden in the black spaces between the lines of a poem. We live on, a poem unfolding that we don't recognize. Only when we listen and deeply gaze at ourselves, the meaning and spirit of living appear. Then the lines emerge. We recall what we did, a poem gets into its form. This is how the personal events in my life have found their way into my poetry.

A poet should feel sympathy for sentient beings. If my people, my friends, and my family members live without happiness and freedom, I need to create poems that stand up for justice. If I live in a country where despotism touches all aspects of people's lives, it is my duty as a poet to denounce and oppose injustice and inhumanity. I express this in language; every line implies my understanding and my responsibility to the value of life.

A poet's sympathy should be universal. If I have no sympathy for people who live in misery, how can I approach my inner world with sincerity? How can I write poems that move people in this era? As for a poet who grew up in Mainland China , my writing must somehow be connected to the inhumane political situation there. Even when writing the inner life, the more inward it gets the more closely it is connected with the politicized life my family members lead. The unjust treatment they receive is a failure in my own life. I who live in a free environment have no excuse not to utter a cry of conscience, in my poetry, for my brothers and sisters who live in an inhumane situation.

Many of the poems in An Ordinary Day seem to make connections between the natural world and the world man has created. What are your thoughts on man's treatment of other men and of the environment? How do you feel that these personal ideas translate into your poetry?

These ideas might seep in because during my childhood and adolescence in China , I was horribly mistreated, so I didn't have very positive feelings toward humanity. They also might be apparent because I naturally like nature: nature is pure and profound; nature never cheats us or carries and spreads hatred; nature forever loves us if we love and respect her. Most importantly: We learn and understand life from nature; we know the principle of living by communicating with nature.

But we have our lives to spend and to experience. Poetry is about the very details and spirits of living these lives. My poetry has to connect with my daily living experiences. My writing displays the links with both subjects: our lives in feelings and the honorable nature. I stand in my life and society, deeply questioning my heart, and I receive answers from nature. I write; I listen; I understand. I have never worried that nature would mislead me. It will never happen if we try to live as pure, honest and kind as nature. That is why you say “ many of the poems in An Ordinary Day seem to make connections between the natural world and the world man has created.” In fact, I regularly seek out refuge in nature for my writing and have completed three writing residencies in U.S. national parks: Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado ; Isle Royale National Park , in Michigan and Buffalo National River , in Arkansas . I had some of my happiest writing times there.

The poems in An Ordinary Day are very diverse in both style and theme. How do you feel that the poems included in the volume are connected, and how do they connect with the title?

I am very conscious of not repeating myself in both style and theme. If I repeat the same theme, I would think that my life has possibly stopped, and I may have no more ability to experience and display things on a large scale. (If I love life and sincerely live, I will always have new experiences, and then new themes, in my theory.) If I repeat the same style, I would think that I am cheating myself; I am no longer moving toward the zone of exploring new writing technologies. I am just copying my past for future readers. One excellent thing about poetry is that poetry always presents fresh, unique and unfamiliar writing to readers. These unfamiliar writings probe new territories in our lives, and that is exciting and inspiring to people. So, one of my principles of writing is not to repeat myself. Always have something new for myself first, then for readers. New style is beauty. It challenges me and cultivates better writing. New theme is a path of spiritual growth. It nourishes me and fosters deeper thinking.

The poems in An Ordinary Day were written in different periods of my life. That's why they seem different. And they all relate to each other, because they all emanated from the same writer.

“How do they connect with the title?” Let me refer to my response to Alice James Books' request for a self-description of An Ordinary Day:

Every day of our lives is ordinary: we eat and think; we labor and stress; we sleep and dream; we are optimistic and depressed. To live every day is to cross a bridge between spirit and flesh: we see a rainbow rise and fall between birth and death, this colorful arc carries us to a land of decent living and a home bathed in peace and the deep contemplation of human beings. Or, we see a winding polluted river pushing us to awaken and slumber; dark and swollen water flushes us into a low field full of hatred, quicksand territories everywhere; spirits lost, body as a weapon to attack and destroy other bodies, to shame humans, through strong beliefs.

This is the theme of the book of An Ordinary Day. It begins ordinary and becomes poignant and sharp. It attempts to reach the bottom of darkness and then rises with the light, flying, accompanied by a singing heart, continually composing for this overwrought world. This is the world that we work so hard to find ourselves in, to have peace and joy. The systems in societies dislike each other but exist in the same narrow space; so many people are poor and desperate; so many people are rich and amused. The world needs a good poem, ordinary and profound, to depict, and to hope.

In many of the poems in An Ordinary Day, it seems that imagery is the way in which you convey meaning to the reader. In particular, there are several poems in the collection that leave the reader with a sense of the narrator's own isolation and fear. In "Remembering," you write that "Living among people, I am / a wolf. . .". Is this a metaphor you utilize in much of your poetry? How does this find its way into your poems from your own personal experiences?

The image of the wolf presents nature, wildness and feelings of anger. I have previously described my feeling toward nature; I also described how my deeply injured childhood and living in a mad and lost society caused so much damage in my early life, and humanity's unkind and indecent behavior in general. Gathering all these forces together, that is the reason that I have used “wolf” imagery and let it connect with “ living among people.” This is not a metaphor that I utilize in much of my poetry, but is one of many running streams of feelings in my life and in my writing.

The first few titles of the poems in An Ordinary Day are bracketed with references to van Gogh paintings. How did this art find its way into your poetry, and what significance did it have for you and for the meanings of the poems?

The reason that I love Van Gogh's paintings is that he devoted his life to art and to his spiritual desires. That spiritual desire of living in his heart and in his honesty--to display himself as a true and original human being—has deeply impacted me. Like Van Gogh, I appreciate nature; I prefer being alone in nature than to be in a crowd. Nature has given me inspiration and revelations of life. I admire Van Gogh's ability to burn through his existence and creativity, and transfer such beauty, inspiration and love to all. A love which seems so lonely and full of grief, yet it is powerful and poignant. His love tells us to be ourselves, to love and give, no matter what the circumstances. This also should be the core and truth of poetry, of writing poetry, of being a human being.

In general, how do you utilize the tools of grammar, style, and structure -- such as your line breaks and the repetition of certain words -- in order to enhance the meanings in your poems?

I don't focus specifically on grammar. Style is the nature and quality of a writer, and I consider this primary. I think more of the growth and completeness of my spiritual and realistic living. About structure: in poetry, my deepest concern is about how to use words—the only available writing technology--how to precisely, intelligently and uniquely arrange and organize words, and how to connect them. There is only one word that is the best and only one to follow from the previous one, together allowing you to depict what you want to tell in the best way. There are hundreds of words that all want to be chosen. Now it is your turn to face the challenge and mess of words, to find just the right one. Every line that you are creating is like this; every poem that you are creating is like this. The more precise you are, the closer you are to what you really want to express. The two words present an individual and irreplaceable world. You change one of these two and the world changes. Bingo! You are totally responsible for whether the readers are able to follow you or not. The words, the lines are like a bridge which reaches out to the readers from your mind and heart. If you are not precisely depicting, the bridge is broken, and then the relationship between the writer and the reader collapses. I have spent half of my life learning how to connect two words in poetry. Between two words is the vast movement of my life.

Another half of my life? The space between two sentences. The chasm, the lacuna, the emptiness presented between two lines. There is so much behind what you just wrote, these words are only an introduction to bring you to a brand new world. So much power and understanding exists in the blackness and emptiness between two lines, and what you just wrote is powerless and obscures the coming force. The more you say, the less you create. The real meaning of poetry always exists between the lines. How to display and present them shows how much we understand poetry and life. This is the level above technique but we have to start from it. We know more then speak less; we speak less then know much more. Between two lines is where the spirits and wisdom settle, is where the ancestors continually live.

As a writer in Chinese, living in the United States , do you find it difficult or frustrating to translate your poems into English? Do you feel that it is possible to translate your work from one language into another without missing something of the meaning it has in its original language? What is this process like for you?

The meaning does not get lost in the translation process. The lost aspects are the cultures behind the poems; the rhyme, the pace, the allusions, the myths, etc. The most unfortunate lost parts are the unspeakable and inner contents that the poems display. But we still have to transfer the thoughts and beauty from one language to another, carry the spirits from one land to another. If the translators are good, they always transfer the native cultures, the rhyme, the pace and the rest to the translated language, and make a comfortable and pleasing acceptance for new readers. That's why the spirits have passed generation through generation, but the delicate crafts have been lost.

I am very fortunate to have the poet Keith Waldrop as the key translator of some of my poems. Keith Waldrop teaches at Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island , and, with Rosmarie Waldrop, is editor of the small press, Burning Deck. He has translated many French poets' work. The English translations of my poems are done in two steps. First versions are prepared by people who know Chinese and from these, in consultation with me, Keith makes final versions. I am extremely grateful to Keith Waldrop for translating my poems for many years.

As a Chinese writer living in the United States , I do find it tremendously difficult and sometimes poignantly frustrating to have so few of my poems translated into English. I have been writing prolificly in Chinese, but most of my poems remain stored in a drawer and have not been translated. For a period of time, I was so discouraged by not having my work translated, I stopped writing new poems altogether. I know this is the reality that I must live with, since I have chosen to live in this country.

In reflection, it seems that you have endured great hardship in order to write as you are able to now. How do you feel that that has affected your poetry? Why do you think it is necessary for our culture to have poets, and other writers?  

Without hardship, I might not be a poet. Without greater hardship, I might not have pursued being pure and decent. I was strong enough to go through the dark times without getting swallowed and destroyed by grief, turbulence and depression. I so desired to live and fight through the ill surroundings and not become twisted. Writing poetry has been the meaning of my life. One poem from one day's writing could grant me tremendous joy and satisfaction. The day could be shining and holy if there was a poem being written. A poem would bring the ill force out of my day, my life. A poem would send me one stair higher to where I would eventually like to be, to live or be among excellent others, to communicate, to fly. Poems have made me stronger and deeper, kinder and purer. Poetry offers the same to this world, making it more considerate, more tolerant of others, more tranquil and loving.

So, poetry presents hope. It creates a force to shield us from illness in mind and body. Poetry leads us to cut through the dark, enables us to see, to touch and refine; to sing alone, and to elevate and fly.

To be a poet represents a commitment to life under particular circumstances: being joyful, being sorrowful; being less noticed, being nearly poor. In my understanding: writing poetry means one is willing and ready to be sacrificed.

Last Updated: May 18, 2004