When the heart moves

Author: Fei Ma
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: In early June 2002, at the "Fei Ma Modern Poetry Symposium" held in Haikou City, a literature professor placed Fei Ma, the poet, and Ma Wei, the scientist, on his value scale and solemnly declared, "Fei Ma is much heavier than Ma Wei!" He did so with good intentions, aiming to highlight some of my achievements in modern poetry creation. However, I myself do not measure myself using this deconstructive approach. After all, the pen name and the real name refer to the same person. Similar questions have been raised before. Many years ago, when I visited mainland China for academic exchange, I gave a poetry collection left at the bottom of my suitcase to my cousin, who worked at the Guangzhou Customs. He didn’t say anything when I gave it to him, but as soon as I returned to the U.S., I received a long letter from him scolding me for not focusing on my research. He wrote, "Look at Yang Zhenning and Lee Tsung-dao! How glorious they are in China! Why don’t you just concentrate on your scientific research?" My cousin probably didn’t know that the Nobel Prize has only a handful of winners, and it’s impossible for an engineer to win one. I remember my response at the time was, "In the U.S., there are thousands of scientists like me, but only one person who writes poems under the name Fei Ma!" A few years ago, when I decided to retire early from the Argonne National Laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy, it was also based on the same consideration—I wanted to dedicate more time and energy to my old love (writing) and my new passion (painting and sculpture). From a purely utilitarian perspective, my years of scientific research have not been entirely in vain, nor have they deeply burdened human society. More importantly, I believe everyone should make the most effective, most fulfilling arrangement for their lives based on their interests and talents. Forcing a general to be a soldier, or a soldier to be a general, is a waste and disaster for society as a whole, and a heavy burden for the individual—a foolish choice and arrangement. Few people know that my history of writing prose is as long as my history of writing poetry. When I was studying at the Taipei Vocational School, I co-founded a mimeographed journal called "Morning Dawn" with a few classmates. To make up for the shortage of contributions each issue, as the editor, I had to use various pen names to write poetry, prose, reviews, and fiction. Once, one of my prose pieces won a prize in a youth essay competition for the "Sheng Xing Daily" supplement. Later, on a few occasions, probably because of temporary shortages of contributions, my articles replaced the column of a famous writer at the time. But later, I still focused on poetry, mainly because of time constraints. Poetry, especially short poems, doesn’t require sitting at a desk in a formal manner; it can be nurtured in the mind at any time. Of course, it might also be that the form of poetry was more suited to my young, lovesick heart at the time. However, as I grew older, writing poetry gave me an increasingly unsatisfying feeling. Of course, poetry values subtlety, and an unsatisfying feeling is one sign of good poetry. But it often made me feel a sense of incompleteness, as if something was missing. I think there might be a wild frontier between poetry and prose. A few years ago, when I had the opportunity to write a column for a Hong Kong newspaper supplement, I began exploring this frontier, introducing my own or others' poems into my prose. I sought a delicate balance between poetry and prose—not merely "enlarged poetry" (as Professor Xu Fugui put it) or "shrunk prose." I wanted to let poetry and prose complement each other in my works, blending seamlessly. The feeling of incompleteness still remains, but I have already experienced the joy of expressing myself.
Another goal is to let readers know that modern poetry is not as obscure, intimidating, or difficult to understand as the rumors or general imagination suggest. I don’t know how successful I’ve been in this regard, but I have received emails from several college students in Hong Kong thanking me for giving them the opportunity to engage with modern poetry. The rise of computer networks has provided a convenient platform for publication. A few years ago, at the encouragement of an American poet friend, I established the "Fei Ma Art World" website, showcasing my Chinese and English poetry selections, bilingual monthly poems, prose, and my increasingly beloved works of painting and sculpture. Through this website, I have been able to communicate with poets, writers, artists, scholars, and readers from Southeast Asia, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe. In the past, this was almost impossible. But no matter how magical the internet is, it still feels somewhat illusory to me. If traditional publishing is like a battle fought on paper, then online publication lacks even the tangible, turnable pages, let alone the refreshing scent of ink! In my imagined future bookstore, Chopin’s piano music will reverberate through the air, and readers, holding copies of my book "When the Heart Moved," will stand or sit. Among them, a young person (not just in age) with moist eyes and a smile on their lips will hold this very book. This vision stirred a wave of happiness within me, as I described in the poem:
This gentle breeze must come from your sweet sigh,
Now tempting the flowers to reveal their fragrance,
And stirring ripples of happiness as it brushes past the leaves and me.