Book review: Wind Says, by Bai Hua

Wind Says
by Bai Hua (translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain)
Chinese University Press

"A book contains all kinds of dreams." These words sandwich Book, a poem in award-winning "post-Misty" poet Bai Hua's anthology, Wind Says. The sentiment is brought home in the collection, which spans decades of the poet's life and pertains to experiences of determination and inspiration. But while dreams and hopes are channelled, so, too, are fear and oppression. Ideals are intermingled with a cold reality (realism is, after all, a defining characteristic of Misty poetry, a reaction against restrictions on art during the Cultural Revolution) of politics, struggle and hardship.

Appearing after more than a decade of poetic silence by Bai, Wind Says serves up his works in chronological order, from the 1980s onwards. Characteristic of Chinese writing, landscapes and nature are prevalent, but they are less romanticised than one may expect. Nature offers solace in its transience and temporal flux.

Time is a concept, the poet says, that "has always been the greatest wonder for me". Translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain was instructed to ensure all the poems were dated, which draws attention to the development of particular themes over time. Not only nature, but religion, family, Chinese culture and history, politics, his vocation as a writer - these all permeate Bai's works.

Simple ideas - or "encounters", as Sze-Lorrain calls them - span the years. We traverse from youth to ageing - from young men to The Old Poet. Later poems are more abstract, incorporating more prose. Indeed, Bai says that for him (as a writer mainly of critical prose and hybrid texts) the poetic ideal is of weaving prose with poetry. As is common in Chinese poetry, metaphors abound but they do not feel contrived. Messages are conveyed in sharp but poignant images, paying homage to Chinese and Western writers of the past, as well as to the philosophical tradition in which Chinese writing is steeped.