Anna's Star Light
Poetry Alive
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Anna's Star Light Poetry Alive
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Your Mirror poem is a pensive and poignant opus. It is also
an intriguing verse about shared solitude and suffering. However, it reveals
less than it hides. Mirror poems are
miraculous portals of the poet's identity, of self and soul. They also
represent an entire genre in themselves.
Now, before I go further, let me point out that as far as I
am concerned, I do not trust mirrors. They are hopelessly incorrigible liars.
They shrink you, enlarge you, and distort you. They reverse your reflection
from right to left. Just show a written page to the mirror, and you immediately
see what I mean. Besides, no two mirrors are the same; regardless whether they
are concave or convex, or ordinary flat surface mirrors. They are all
different. And they always contradict you. For example, if you point your
finger horizontally toward the north, perpendicular to its plane, the mirror
will point to the south.
Actually, what we see in the mirror is not an exact
reflection but an image modified by our perception of ourselves. We project our
thoughts and feelings on mirrors. People with eating disorders, for example,
tend to see their reflected image in the mirror fat, even if they are slim. Due
to the intense fear of becoming obese, they perceive themselves overweight in
spite of being emaciated. The vast majority of anorexic-bulimic persons are
young women from middle and upper class families. They are victims of a cruel
society obsessed with debased views of youth and sadistic contempt of aging,
immersed in a sick culture that does not respect women and dehumanizes
womanhood.
Culture is complex, of course, but in this Machiavellian
environment also a cunning conspiracy exists between the entertainment industry
and the fashion establishment, between promoters of diet fads, pharmaceutical
corporations and medical clinics who unscrupulously brainwash people that
something is wrong with their appearance. Thousands of plastic surgeons perform
every year millions of liposuctions, face lifts, nose jobs, breast
augmentations and other operations. Most of their patients are women, who stand
more and more time in front of their slyly concurring mirrors.
But let us go back to poetry. Generally speaking, a poem
does not attempt to exhaust its topic. In the particular case of your Mirror,
perhaps we even might ask: Is less more? What I mean
is this: How does the poem gain weight by connecting your own reflections with
the tragedy of Plath and Atwood's fascination with
mirrors?
I am not calling here for changing the verse, because I
believe in the author's authority (please, see page 51 in my collection of
Postmodern Light), regarding the correspondence between intention and
expression. Revisions are double edged swords: sometimes they improve the
piece, sometimes they weaken it.
Western art, including poetry and literature, is obsessed
with a confused postmodern perspective of meaninglessness, nihilism, despair,
malice and venom, eventuating in the culture of drugs and death.
Personally, I am attracted more to your poems than to those
of Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood and many other
North-American writers. Why? Because your gracefully
sensitive voice combines a mystical outlook with a sublime wisdom that brings a
flowering high noon antidote to western decadence.
It is good to grow and evolve, but does every direction of
change benefit us all the same? I do not subscribe to the credo of cultural
relativism, which ironically concludes that all societies and cultures are
equal. Cannibalism still exists in some parts of the world. The West had
practiced slavery, witch burning, and its modern dictators murdered countless
millions of people.
On the other hand, you come from a marvellous
ancient land with a grand poetic heritage.
You carry within you a pristine magical world, a spiritual
extension of the Great Wall as a majestic symbol spanning continents, bridging
past, present and future:
Upon my heart, the Great Wall
is an eternal home,
crossing over the
My offspring will follow its beckoning
towards a root-searching return
(1).
In order to contrast your poignantly lofty, soul uplifting
oeuvre against the voices of existential angst and despair as the hollow
backdrop of Canadian literature, I would like to use the example of Margaret
Atwood. Although she is a toweringly gifted writer, her main forte lays in the
mastery of the language, in the domain of aesthetics, rather than in the power
of her arguments, the validity of her message, or the persuasiveness of her
vision. Her excessive preoccupation with form and deconstruction obfuscates
content and meaning in her work.
The deconstructionist ambiguity of Atwood’s writings is a
telltale hallmark of postmodern art. Deconstruction denies the possibility of
point to point communication between author and reader. It claims that the meaning
and the significance in the writer’s constructed text are always altered
through the deconstructing interpretation of the reader. Thus the reader is as
much a creator as the author. Consequently, communicating coherent meaning is
impossible.
While it is certainly true that communication always
involves the possibility of misinterpretation, extreme deconstructionist theory
does not really hold water. If effective human communication were impossible,
the astonishingly complex operation of landing the astronauts on the moon could
not have been accomplished.
My basic criterion for judging the value and significance of
art is tied to its life serving function. Atwood herself says that art is not
for its own sake, or for the sake of morality, but for “survival’s sake”. She
examines human history and discovers its bloody cycles of violent calamities.
According to her she wrote the dystopic novels of The
Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake as cautionary tales for our inevitable
apocalyptic future of self annihilation through the abuse of science and
technology.
Although we have to differentiate between the beliefs of
fictional characters in a novel versus the author’s own views, I find Atwood’s
vision of history misguided. What is worse, her fundamental message as a
visionary writer ironically backfires because of her non sequitur panic and
hopelessness. Is it really the destiny of the human race to destroy
itself? If there is no hope of survival
in the future, why should we struggle at all? To prevent the
inevitable apocalypse? I reject
not only the depressing vision of a hopeless human future but also the
homogenously repulsive climate of her dystopias, which on the whole dehumanize
women and demonize men.
In spite of the fact that history is filled with darkness,
violent tragedies and wars, it is a story of light, accomplishments and periods
of peace as well. I believe that through collaboration, goodwill and harmony
among the nations we are capable to avoid a spiralling
deterioration of the human condition. Just as humans are capable of waging
wars, they are also capable of making peace.
I take it for granted that women have equal rights to men. I
also believe that peace on earth cannot be achieved without the elevation of
women. However, human happiness cannot be divided into separate realms of
female and male domains. Individual happiness can be achieved only through the
collective efforts and collaboration of man and women.
Generally speaking in many respects women appear to be wiser
than men. I believe that women have a higher sense of care for others, as well
as a higher level of emotional and social intelligence. They really should hold
key positions in every field of life in greater numbers.
And this brings me back to Atwood. Reflected in a feminist
mirror, her characters are often men portrayed as rapists, predatory
aggressors, violent misogynists and evil murderers of women:
The men of the town stalk homeward,
Excited by their show of hate,
Their own evil turned inside out like a glove,
And me wearing it (2).
Her Half-Hanged Mary is inspired by a real event during the
Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s. However, Atwood distorts history by presenting
this case as evidence of a war of men against women. She withholds the fact
that men and even children became victims of witch hunts; and that women also
participated in the persecutions of witches. Her approach to history reminds me
Mark Twain’s comment: The truth is a most precious commodity, let’s economize
it. So, Atwood’s poem emerges as a well-written propaganda piece advancing
feminist agendas. Ironically, it is politically correct but historically false.
Unfortunately, within the context of North-American
literature Margaret Atwood has contributed to the postmodern outlook of despair
and hopelessness. Her poetic voice also has deepened the discordance between
men and women, furthering their alienation. It undermines social harmony.
The truth is a sacred domain of the poet, yet nonetheless
poetry is full of lies. This paradoxical Yin-Yang polarity is its necessary
attribute because poetry expresses all aspects of existence, earth and sky,
matter and mind, reality and dream, cosmos and soul. Plato wanted to exclude
poets from his Republic. His intention was to restrict the privilege of lying
to the rulers of his perfect commonwealth, whenever the public good requires
it. This is of course a recipe for the oppression of culture and the rise of
fascism. Poetic lies are not ordinary lies of deceptive human relations but the
other side of the truth. The figments of artistic imagination reflect
transcendental ontological dimensions of veracity. And they play a pivotal role
in human life. A society that expels poetry is a society that loses its soul.
Moreover, humanity needs the dreams, the fantasies and visions of utopians,
prophets and sages for its own advancement. A new world is born out of the
flight of novel ideas and imaginative perceptions, rather than out of fossil traditions
and outworn knowledge.
I find your mirrors more fascinating than those of Atwood, Plath and other poets of despair. In contrasts to their
depressive verses, your poetry moves, inspires and uplifts. You sing about
poplars, dandelions and moonlight, memories and dreams, joys and sorrows in a
magical voice that transcends the here and now.
Yet the fall cannot stop its footsteps,
And descends into the dark night.
I stand like a beacon.
Light travels to shine on the faraway road.
I won’t believe—
We cannot arrive in spring (3).
And with its sober sadness, the touching melancholic tone of
your poem, When I die, celebrates life even in death:
My grave will open its sliding tunnel,
For a butterfly to flutter to the moon,
When lavenders swing in evening primroses,
A wish star shall land in your dream (4).
Your heartfelt words and thoughtful lines transport me from
the mundane world to a spiritual cosmos. They create unbounded bridges between
finite matter and infinite soul, suspended in the ethereal sphere of the
transitory past and the eternal present.
There must be something
Beneath the snow,
When quiescence dominates mountains,
Squirrels clutch pinecones,
And I watch you from a distance (5).
Well, Sweet Anna, at this point I stop.
May you go from strength to strength!
Paul
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References:
1) Anna Yin, The Great Wall;
The Future Looks Bright,
A CFP Anthology, edited by Tracy Repchuk;
2) http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/01/277707.shtml
3) Anna Yin, Farewell to Sunflowers ,
4) Farewell to Sunflowers , p. 38
5) Farewell to Sunflowers, p. 14
2007 Update (Copy right by Anna Yin) |
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