New Generation: Poems from China Today

This very accessible and important new anthology presents poems by two dozen poets writing in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, an event that provides a deep, resonant undertone to the work which comes through even in translation. This is the generation of poets directly following the dissident ""Misty School,"" best represented by Bei Dao in the States; most were born in the early '60s and are thus in mid-career. The preface by editor Wang Ping (herself a poet of this generation, represented accordingly) delves into the nexus of the spiritual and political, noting how the Communist Party, in an attempt to revalorize itself in the minds of the citizens, ""undertook a strategy that has more or less continued until today, launching one `socialist spiritual civilization' movement after another to stave off `bourgeois liberalization'."" The paradoxes of such a plan are well documented by these poets, most all of whom express a yearning for a new day while emitting signs of the exhaustion of being at the head of a centuries-old civilization. Liu Manliu's medition on time; Che Qianzi's beautiful examination of memory and politics; Yan Li's wryly propulsive ""Serial Poetic"" (""The artist often leans out, stretched/ between two extremes/ shouting for help with exquisite slogans""); Zhai Yongming's feminist, flaneur-esque ""Caf Song"" and the powerful poems of Jia Wei, are all standouts. Among the many translators are David Shapiro, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, all working in collaboration with Ping. While the translations are uneven, the breadth of the work is impressive, and the essential humanity of the writing is both and smart and attractive, and feels necessary. (July)