Poetry review: Something Crosses My Mind, by Wang Xiaoni
The cover image by Xu Bing of Chinese poet Wang Xiaoni's new collection, Something Crosses My Mind, shows fields of crops - a hint at what's within.
by Wang Xiaoni
(translated by Eleanor Goodman)
CU Press
The cover image by Xu Bing of Chinese poet Wang Xiaoni's new collection, Something Crosses My Mind, shows fields of crops - a hint at what's within.
Descriptions of nature and agriculture permeate this collection, which resonates with a beautiful, powerful simplicity. Water buffalo, oxen, wheat, and "rice-gleaner[s] a bent to the ground" ( November's Rice-Gleaners) are the stuff of these pages. But then Wang spent seven years as a labourer in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
Nature, for the poet, is tangible and thick with offerings. In the volume's opening poem, I Feel the Sun, the narrator is found "leaning on sunlight", while in Early Morning, the "sun, like a gallbladder,/rises".
In Thoughts Upon Crossing Yunnan, the land is literally a body, as "Yunnan covers its head to sleep", grass climbs to the top of a body's head, and "canyon's teeth sparkle with lazy light".
The interaction between Wang's characters and their environment is a crucial aspect of her work, vividly epitomised in Plowman, where "red … comes after punishment" and "after pain has been quietly survived".