Releasing: Light and Darkness was published in Arts & Letters , No. 4, Fall 2000

An Interview with Poet Xue Di

--Edward Bok Lee

"Releasing: Light and Darkness"

In 1991, two years after the Tiananmen Massacre, Xue Di wrote:

"We now realize that, apart from vague, rebellious instincts, we know virtually nothing about ourselves. In an environment of free expression, we have lost our words. I stare at myself. I hear a new voice rising from my soul, the voice of my new self. I continue to write about what I know, about my confusion and pain, and about my awakening. I write about my efforts to learn a new culture in despair and ecstasy, about my thoughts on the gap between the two cultures... I write about my country which is deep in misery and crimes...about my love for the people who continue to fight for freedom and democracy..."

The following interview with Xue Di took place at Brown University in August, 1997 upon the poet's recent return from a visit to China for the first time in seven years. He came to Providence , RI in 1990 as a writer in residence in the Freedom To Write Program at Brown University .

Edward Bok Lee

EBL: You wrote criticism on fifty poems for a project on contemporary Chinese poetry that you also edited ["The Rolling Dice: Chinese Contemporary Avant-Garde Poetry--Dialogues"]. Can you talk a little about some of the non-Chinese influences on current avant-garde poets in China at this time.

XD: I think most Chinese avant-garde poets have been very influenced by contemporary European poets. Especially Baudelaire, Valery, and Rilke.

EBL: That's contemporary?

XD: Back to ten years ago, we believed these works to be contemporary, in some ways, avant-garde. You will find many Chinese writers who call themselves 'avant-garde' poets, but you will find a lot of romanticism in their writing. I think this is because of our strong poetic tradition. Classical poetry for thousands of years. Consciously or unconsciously, even if we want to cut off our connection with tradition, to do everything fresh, this long tradition carries over.

EBL: And how have more current avant-garde strains of American poetry, say Language poetry, influenced these writers, including yourself?

XD: There aren't many translations of Language poetry into Chinese. But when I was younger in China , I wrote many articles to introduce 'pure poems,' which might be something like Language poetry here. But I really believe that a good poem will be a good poem. If you have a deep meaning, a spirit, an internal life experience, in those words, among those words, behind those words...that will make the poem really great. But if you don't have more meaningful things behind the poem, the poem itself still could be beautiful if the words are carefully, beautifully, creatively arranged. There's many ways to be a good poet. I don't reject Language poetry, but I am careful because when I was younger I was doing that a lot. Now I understand as a good poem, language is not the only thing. It's not good enough if language is so pure, so beautifully and creatively arranged. It must be something else deeper and meaningful related to the human spirits.

EBL: You spoke at URI [ University of Rhode Island ] last week about American ideology, capitalism. How do you see the American ideology of consumerism affecting Chinese literary production, in particular poetry, for which there's such a reverence for the past?

XD: That's one thing that's made this country [ America ] great. The desire to pursue new things. Constantly. In China , we value history and tradition and people are not as easy to open their minds. It's risky to do new things. If you stay in the old things, you are already successful, so why do you have to break tradition? To be open minded, pursue new things, create new things, is not really the goal for Chinese. How you can maintain the culture? That's the main thing.

EBL: After recently spending four months in China , do you see things changing?

XD: The door is wide open. But it's changing very slowly.

EBL: But then you've been living in the fast-paced U.S. for the past seven years. Do you feel living in US has liberated your poetry in any sense?

XD: I always felt that the inner lives of writers in China were free. If some people didn't dare to write, that's their problem. When we talk about freedom to write, it's very interesting.

Yes. The major reason I feel liberated is because I can see myself from so many different angles in a variety of levels. I was living in a closed society, now I'm living in a totally free society.

EBL: Has this affected experimentation in your poetry?

XD: I pay more attention to my internal experiences. It's abstract, but I feel it's more meaningful.

EBL: Can you be more specific?

XD: In my new poems, I have been trying to hold emotions, to push them back. To make the thing more dry, cool. Not emotional. Not reasonable at all. Calm, cool, to find something deep. To put things behind. Before I tried to put everything in front of the words. When I break a line now, it's naturally I break right there. The last word has rhythm, or power. It's hard to tell why I stop there. I don't want to add any more words. The next line starts totally different. When I was young mostly it was linked. I had lots of emotions. Romantic. That's the big difference.

In the traditional way, also back to twenty years ago, my second line and third line could still relate to the first line. Tradition was always following, without a real break. Now it's one line related to one thing, or reality. The next line quickly shifts to another reality. I use one line to describe this. The second line I try to not link to the first line, try to totally describe another view or thing. So those different views of realities of subjects will create some impact between them.

T'ang dynasty poetry was so beautiful because lots were cut off, the form was extremely structured, limited, because they only had five words, so they had to choose different tones and words, they were forced to cut it off. For me, that was the beauty of T'ang classical poetry.

EBL: Post-modern.

XD: Yes.

EBL: Who are you reading now?

XD: I don't really read a lot in English yet. Some. I reread anthologies, Chinese, English, in translation. But mostly I've been reading myself.

EBL: In an interview with Arthur Sze, in "M?noa," you referred to China as the root of your language. You write only in Chinese. What is your relation to Chinese now in Providence , since you don't experience the language daily? Is the root drying up?

XD: I feel like the root is going deeper and deeper. There's definitely a lack of sensation of my culture, but I gain more sensation of my own spiritual life. So I can not say which is better or worse for a poet.

EBL: I know you've become a jazz enthusiast.

XD: I love Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk, Stan Guess, John Coltrane--one of my favorites, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis, definitely. When I was in China , I didn't know jazz at all.

EBL: Can you talk a little about how jazz has influenced your writing, if at all?

XD: The rhythm, the style is full of life's desire, and pain, and joy, and depression, and life's struggle. There's so much behind it. I feel it's also not direct. Classical music tends to go out. I still enjoy classical music, but I don't like dramatic things too much now. I like when the emotion is hidden, really pressed inward.

EBL: Does this influence the rhythms of your own poetry?

XD: Probably, potentially, under. If everything affects my life, it will come out in my poems. I try to transfer some jazz into my poetry, I'm not trying very, very hard, but I've been conscious of this. I've never researched the rhythms of jazz. I feel like whatever I absorb, my poems will bring out. I don't know how or what, or where.

EBL: What changes do you see in your poetry? What ways have American culture and ideology and life in Providence ( New England ) influenced your poetry if at all?

XD: Mostly it's because I have more options here. Life was limited in China . Internally I could be free and broad in China , but society was lacking information. I was lacking in connections. Here in New England I try to reach my life in many different ways. I don't try to use another style to write a poem, I never think about it. The style changes because my life is changing and developing. A new form and style comes out to suit my new thinking and feeling (of living here).

I feel like I'm living deeper. I'm not living on the surface: I'm happy, I'm not happy, I'm going against society, I'm not going against society. Mostly I have so many options here. Whatever I want to do, I can. When I was in China , there was no challenge, you only have one thing to do, but here you have so many options.

EBL: Do you ever feel isolated here in Providence ?

XD: I'm ready to be lonely, because I understand being lonely, solitude, this really helps me to focus on my internal life.

EBL: Isolated physically, but also linguistically. Has speaking English daily effected the rhythms or imagery of your poetry?

XD: I don't think speaking English affects my rhythm because when I'm writing I'm writing in Chinese. But potentially, very subtly, something's influencing, but I'm not conscious of this. One thing I can tell you in my consciousness is the way to... [pause] ...when I was in China , I wrote very big. I released my emotions toward the whole society. In America , people and society are very detailed. The way people talk is very detailed. Even the structure of English is very detailed. You have to say I'm happy, of what? I'm angry, of what, with what, about what? Americans ask. In Chinese you just say I'm angry. I think this is a cultural difference.

EBL: Between East and West.

XD: Chinese pursue, focus on completion more than details. Western society is so scientific, so you have to focus on details. Without details, there's no whole. In China , the whole thing is first, then come details.

EBL: And this has affected your poetry.

XD: Yes, I'm really focused on details more now. Line by line, word by word. This was not conscious before. I went back to China last year. I went to a poetry conference where people discussed my new poetry. 'This is a very contemporary, avant-garde style,' they said. 'So many details, the images, the views.' When I looked at the poetry, I said 'Yes.' I really had a lot of details. In China no one really writes that way. Because it's still about emotion. Everything comes out. But for me I have the general idea, but the meaning is not singular, it is scattered. Each one has its own individual meaning. Only when you put all the individual meanings together, can you see the complete meaningfulness. That's one aspect of a postmodern sensibility. The Chinese asked, 'How many collections of contemporary American have you read?' 'None,' I said. They accused me of lying. Of writing in a postmodern style. I told them probably because I'm living in that society, I'm absorbing all the styles and ways people focus on the details. So I am forced to tell details. Clarity. I've been trained by this style. Because my life is more detailed, the poem comes out more detailed.

EBL: Is this possibly an example of American culture having touched your subconscious?

XD: Yes. But this is about style. Details are also related to life's feeling. The new poems I've been writing is about living in a society full of choices, options. I feel like I'm able to get into myself. I'm confirmed. I want to be a poet, a writer, a good writer. I want to plant my feet into the soil, like roots, going deeper and deeper, being conscious, aware, patient to do whatever I'm doing.

There's also lots of comparison with my past, culture, serious thinking of my life, self-understanding, self-retrospection. This really made my poetry become more and more different. That's the content, the meaning. It's not just about style.

EBL: Content influencing form.

XD: I'd like to emphasize that I think content is mostly from one's spirit, which is what poetry is about.

EBL: Because Russia and China came to consumerism later than other nations, it's easier to see how they're being affected. Do you feel the ideology of American-style capitalism is more or less conducive to Poetry than Chinese-style communism?

XD: I think [American-style capitalism] can mix well with poetry. Everything can mix well with poetry, because poetry is the experience of life. If people experience that kind of lifestyle, live that way, it will definitely match to poetry. Coca-cola and entertainment and enjoyment of life are another thing. I'm not extreme and go against development of more enjoyment and consumption to feel and enjoy life more, but when you sink too far into it, people begin to lose the sensation of the spirit. Because the more you encourage your body to encounter the consumption, all the consumption, the less relation you have to the spirit.

EBL: Why is that necessarily so?

XD: If you live a quiet life, you can understand yourself. Capitalism can be very noisy: bars, rock-n-roll, concerts, beach, vacations.

EBL: And jazz concerts?

XD: That's different. Rock-n-roll for me is releasing, bringing everything out, screaming out your emotions, feeling of life. When you release that much you can become inhuman. You see all the violence at rock concerts. You don't see this kind of violence with jazz. Emotion is dangerous when it's flying around, hanging in the air. Emotion doesn't go in deep. Emotion gives you power to release a lot of things, but it doesn't help you seriously think about your life. That's the way I wrote poetry while living in China . Emotion can make an artist very powerful, very strong, but how deep? You could say emotions are one of the deepest things in human life, but I feel how much really dark...[pause]...you're not just showing dark, you also have to put lights inside the dark, to light the darkness, to let people see the shape of darkness, to let them see in the center or behind the darkness that there is a light. That's the whole point, in my understanding. I feel rock-n-roll is sheer darkness; releasing all the emotions. There's no release of light. There's nothing really going down into the ground. I don't mean I don't like rock-n-roll. I like the Doors, but jazz and new age and classical and opera have touched me more. You have to feel something going up and coming down. Then you feel complete. You don't feel cut off, like you're flying around in the wind with pure emotion. You have to have something really stay with your soul. Stay with the depths of human life. That kind of understanding and feeling probably makes you a good writer, a good artist. Without those things, I doubt it. You could be good at one specific thing, a very good Language poet, and very good emotional poet, but that's very narrow. I'm talking about writing as a way to understand life, a way to express one's feelings related to that life.

EBL: How is this releasing of emotion different in poetry for you?

XD: I'm releasing, but that's one end: going up. In the mean time, another end is reaching down. It's like a tree. I always feel that my life should be like a tree. The topside is going up to the sky, to eat sunshine, but the roots are going down down down. The deeper the roots are, the higher the tree can rise.

Last Updated: May 15, 2004