"My consciousness on earth is two-fold / My parents speak in two tongues" is how Marilyn Chin describes her cultural identity in "The Colonial Language is English." I heard Chin read her poems when I was a junior at Oberlin and was fascinated by the use of Chinese characters, puns, and sayings within her English verses. At that time, I was unaware that I would soon be awarded a Shansi fellowship for teaching and living in the rural Shanxi province of China, and that I would spend two years of my life struggling to communicate in Mandarin.
When I arrived in China, less than a month after graduating from Oberlin, I had never been abroad. I also couldn't speak a word of Chinese. I had just spent my undergraduate years discussing literary theory and the art of lines breaks. I soon found myself unable to order food at a restaurant or mail a letter at the post office-forget emotion or nuance or anything "poetic."
In the beginning of my Mandarin study, I made many mistakes. The tones in Chinese encourage accidents; speaking one syllable incorrectly can change the entire meaning of a sentence. I have asked a waitress to bring me "a wife" when I meant "a bottle-opener," and told friends I was "screaming out in happiness" when I meant "applying to graduate school." I once thought the two characters in the word "week" translated to English as "the breath of the stars." How poetic, I thought. Then a friend explained that the character for "breath" is qi with a fourth tone, and the character used in week is qi with a first tone, which simply means, "a period of time."
At some point, I began to write down the mistakes that I made, and realized that my blunders were creating relationships between words that I would never think to link together. My errors in Mandarin created a series of haphazard metaphors, acting as the main source for most of the poetry I have written over the past year and a half. My new poems contain Chinese characters, puns between English and Mandarin, and Chinese phrases that take on new meaning when translated directly into English. I am fascinated with what lives under the bridge between languages. As an outsider to a foreign language, we often miss a word's connotations. But can our lack of understanding actually create new nuances, and give fresh meaning to everyday words?
Writing poetry in China has given me the chance to reflect on my relationship to the new language and culture that envelopes me, and also to trace how the relationship has evolved over the course of these two years. I expect that the experiences I have had living abroad will continue to influence my writing in the years to come.
Salt
|
| Lake, nuur, is round |
|
| in the mouth. Mongolian r | |
| rolls like a child through grass. |
|
| But the horse listens | |
| for hu, a Mandarin | |
| tone, rising like haze |
|
| off the distant freeway. |
|
| 一之走 Stay forward |
|
| I scold |
|
| when he falters, looks back. |
|
| But really, can you blame him? | |
| Like Sodom, these plains | |
| take it lying down- | |
| all day, under virgin-blue | |
| spells-and then, night | |
| with its negligee of stars. | |
| Heading south, braised in sweat, |
|
| we pass playas |
|
| and lakes of brine. |
|
| Herdsmen light cigarettes, |
|
| their sighs nudge the clouds. |
|
| My horse, green-mouthed |
|
| looks back again. |
|
| Because what is it, |
|
| now, the worst |
|
| that can happen? |
|
| A glance, to turn | |
| tastes of land, and skin. |
A Map of Shanxi
Taigu, China 2007
First, draw the world.
But the world
erased of water. Lake-bottom,
now a plateau. Riverbed, arc
of dust. And where ocean should be,
a swaying tapestry of corn.
To make TH, I tell my students,
the tongue must curl
and leave the mouth. Think this
through: northern earth's
weather. Repeat until tongues
harden, parch like the valley
of Ezekiel. Voices elbow
towards a cadence. Words
hit words, pile like skeletons.
And all day, the air's gānzào-
so dry, I can't feel what is it you might
call God. As if to say
it's humid were a synonym
for knowing the hand,
the sweaty familiar hold of it, lines
that are rivers. No, my skin splits
in absence. We ride
on, bikes veiled
in thirsty powder. Gobi wind
takes the leaves, leaves us still,
and wanting- what
was it? A forgotten word
tastes like
the barrel's bottom.
Frantic to remember,
all I know is to head towards
the market, in hopes
someone might have it
in their cracking hand,
so I can ask, what is this?
But here, without
the word, I've forgotten
also, the shape of it
and what else is there
to recall now, in this place
where every color is living
the life of another? I buy oranges
but they're green. Greens, they're
prisms, spun in oil. Egg yolk,
something blue. My hair, plain
auburn, students calling
gold. I told the vendor,
I need, I was needing,
or was it? Was it
wanting,
either, the same character
yao. 要 Open your mouth,
let the wind out,
and then, on closing, find it
empty. The dry mouth
that first said bring me
the cup, the mouth
that also said
the sky's backwashed
in dirty watercolor
is now searching for
the bright word, waiting
in the dust. If Ezekiel wants
the wheel, it's just
the cigarette-sun, setting on China,
neon on inhale, dark by the time
the lips separate again. Think this
through: northern earth,
speak. An echo is just
a voice, just the bones,
your own. Write a name
in loess, watch it leave
you for the dark
spine of Atlas.
Cup your hands, and wait.
But do not ask for rain.
