Xue Di: A Poet in a League with Rimbuad was published in The Providence Journal , July 7 th , 2002

Xue Di: A poet in a league with Rimbaud

07/07/2002

BY TOM D'EVELYN
Special to The Journal

AN ORDINARY DAY, by Xue Di, translated by Keith Waldrop. Alicejames Books. 43 pages. $12.95.

Born in Beijing in 1957 and associated with Brown University 's Freedom to Write Program since shortly after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, Xue Di is widely published in Chinese and in English translation. In addition, his work has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese. With the publication of An Ordinary Day, which won the 2001 Jane Kenyon Chapbook Award, Xue Di can be recognized as a major voice in world poetry.

He opens this book with three meditations on paintings by Van Gogh. These are followed by a long lyric that constitutes a personal credo, or "art of poetry."

For the next 28 pages, the body of the book displays Xue Di's range. Especially notable is "The Town Drunk," which, in empathy and imagery and speed of transition, reminds one of Rimbaud. The roller-coaster ride climaxes in a series of shorter lyrics, starting with the title poem and including a poem that answers the credo of the opening section.

The special quality of Xue Di's poetry is an intensity derived from a fusion of general concepts and personal imagery. Major themes include love, terror, memory, heaven, ancestry, identity. Treated in varying contexts and mixes, these themes can invest compact lyrics with searing power. The effect, as in the best poetry of Rimbaud, can be hallucinatory yet steady in the imagination.

"The world I entered once and wasted / sways in my heart with a gentle sweetness / I touch the soil in quiet ecstasy," he writes in "Homing." As a poet in exile, Xue Di draws on his condition in ways that defeat narcissism: the world embraces him and his reader.

Among my favorite poems in this rich collection is "Love in Difficulty." Both personal and hymnic, this poem illustrates some of Xue Di's characteristics: Lucid statement fused with crystalline imagery, rapid transitions between major themes, the whole poem opening toward virtual reality and not only that, but a real future, the concrete future of the reader. Xue Di's poetry touches the intimate identity of the reader as a fellow human being.

"Can't you feel the difficulty / of connecting the first line / with a whole life? The hardship of / this life makes life, in another / reality, glide / Much love turns us, vertiginous, takes / away suffering. The ark of poetry, at last / watertight, rises in the latest / days of this life."

And that's the middle of the poem!

Knowing nothing of the original Chinese poems, I must add that Xue Di has been well served by his translator and Brown colleague, Keith Waldrop. These poems insist upon their right to be heard, shoulder aside any number of slender books of poetry that cross the reviewer's desk, and raise the possibility that we are in the presence of a poet who will give his generation a sense of purpose. In any event, An Ordinary Day is a revelation of the possibilities of contemporary poetry.

Tom D'Evelyn is a freelance editorial consultant in Providence .

Last Updated: May 15, 2004