The Ferryboat and the Traveler (Poetry)

Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 2024

This essay undertakes a survey of Korean modernist poetry in miniature by means of a singular motif—the seaport (hanggu)—in whose tidal vortex the politics and poetics of the Korean Peninsula were recalibrated at the outset of the modern age, specifically the years submerged in the depths of Japanese colonial rule (1910–45). While the essay's comparison between Kim Ch'ang-sul's (1903–50) and Chŏng Chi-yong's (1902–50) 1920s-era modernist aesthetics of dockside labor and harbor construction foregrounds an oscillation between proletarian collectivity and depoliticized solipsism, the pairing of Im Hwa (1908–53) and O Chang-hwan (1918–51) elucidates the divergent vectors of utopian deferral and fatalistic anomie constituting two incommensurable critical standpoints from which to confront the objective upsurge in seaport modernization and industrialization in the late 1930s.

Chinese Literature Today, 2011

Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the Misty Poetry phenomenon of the early to mid 1980s have cast a longer shadow than Wang Jiaxin. Wang, Professor of Literature at Renmin university (one of China’s most prestigious), is not only a major poet, but also an important editor and translator, and an influential literary critic. Because he is known for his uniquely cosmopolitan, existential style, many in China associate him with the so-called intellectual school, a term that would likely signal an “academic” flavor to most Western readers—but this simply would not be an accurate assessment ofWang’s poetic style. Through this interview with sinologist John Crespi, readers will gain a strong sense of Wang’s intimately subjective yet radically cosmopolitan poetics as he discusses the work of Western poets from Paul Celan to Emily Dickens, the relationship between writing and translating poetry, and the existential dislocation of physical/external locations and the psychological/ interior space of poets, such as himself, who have composed a significant body of work outside their homeland.

Journal of Korean Studies , 2023

This article examines the colonial-era poet and critic Im Hwa's (林和 1908-1953) maritime literary trope of Hyŏnhaet'an (玄海灘), the strait separating the Korean peninsula from the Japanese archipelago, as it encompasses Korea's contradictory peripheral location within the Japanese empire. Im Hwa's repeated invocations of this body of water served as a channel for navigating the escalating pressures of colonial censorship, in which the romanticized, masculinist figure of the valiant "youth" (ch'ŏngnyŏn) substituted for the former working-class protagonist from Im's esteemed "short narrative poems" (tanp'yŏn sŏsasi) during the heyday of the proletarian literary movement. Further, Im's fixation on the vicissitudes of the seafaring journey across the strait can be said to articulate the precarious position occupied by Korean colonial subjects of the Japanese emperor, neither permitted full assimilation nor capable of enduring perpetual subjugation as second-class citizens. The article concludes by exploring how the liminality of passage across Hyŏnhaet'an exemplifies both the tensions between nationalism and social class in the revised geopolitical

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 2016

James Joyce Quarterly, 2015

Batavia, the cap i tal of the for mer Netherlands Indies, was home to a pop u lar Chi nese-run print ing indus try that published works in the Malay ver nac u lar. Two 1920s Sino-Malay poems reveal first hand accounts of the city's vibrant socio cul tural land scape. Sair park (The Poem of the Park) nar rates every day life at the parks of the colo nial metropole, includ ing the oppor tu ni ties these urban spaces pro vide for illicit encoun ters between men and women. Pantoen tjapgome (The Quatrain of the Lantern Festival) describes the fes tiv i ties of an impor tant hol i day that increas ingly drifted away from its reli gious ori gins and became a pub lic spec ta cle attended by peo ple from dif fer ent ethnicities. Together, these poems pro vide intri cate and oth er wise unavail able details of everyday life in late-colo nial Java. They also reveal some of the anx i eties faced by its Chi nese-descended pop u la tion, includ ing the spec ter of cul tural loss and unwar ranted inter ac tion between young peo ple from dif fer ent gen ders and racial back grounds. Yet despite this apparent rejec tion of an Indies-style hybrid moder nity, an exam i na tion of the lan guage of these poems-Batavia Malay with a sub stan tial influ ence from Hokkien, the Sinitic vari ety his tor i cally spo ken by many Chi nese-Indo ne sian fam i lies-dem on strates that they are best approached as examples of Chi nese-Indo ne sian accul tur a tion.

Translation and Literature, 2015

novel by Musil's reputation. They will, however, encounter a text which, though stylish and readable, is not always Musil pur.

2017

Zhe n g Z h o u , 11 J u n e 2017. *,1 It is seven a m when Wuliaoren texts me on WeChat that he is freaking out and coming over from Beijing right now, because word is that Dianqiu Gujiu has died. I am in the middle of organizing yesterday's fieldnotes, in one of several dozen Scandinavian log cabins that are lined up way too neatly for Scandinavian log cabins, in the Yellow River Leisure Gardens. Replete with restaurants, meeting rooms, and dreamy lakes that double as fishing ponds, the resort lies just outside the city. Lang Mao is hosting a poets' conference here, in a display of hospitality and wealth and perhaps to ensure that any overly "poetic" behavior happens in a discreet location. Last night's program included live music, with singer Qin Yong inviting

Chinese Literature Today, 2019

These four poems by Mi Jialu show a personal contemplation on the torturous human condition inflicted by historical traumas, environmental crisis, and diasporic alienation. Through a gaze of a surreal lens, the poet seeks to express the inexpressible haunted by memory, dreams, and ghosts. With a more psychological quest, the poet embarks on a journey into the heart of darkness for self-redemption and spiritual illumination.

Southeast Asian studies, 2018

Whether it is an experience of trauma, trial, relief, or even joy, the memory or forgetting of these experiences will occur differently. An event is not simply stored as a memory, and a memory is not simply reiterated as a memoir. Trụ testifies in his own words where he stands in the process of writing the memoir and retelling his story-"we each had our own sorrow"-or again later when leaving the ship Việt Nam Thương Tin, "our memories remain locked in our own minds" (p. 164). While these statements follow particular events in his story, they reflect a consistent adherence to the privacy, specificity, and intangibility of an individual's sorrow and memory of it. In a way, it