When the heart moves ("The American Series" series)

Author: Fei Ma
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-05-01
Features: If a poet is a monk, and a monk sometimes strays into the world, lusting after the flesh, then it is prose. This is a prose of unique and whimsical ideas. Fei Ma is an odd fellow—an odd poet and prose writer, and also a physicist Ma Weiye; he is also a sculptor and painter, which makes him seem like a bandit trying to snatch the breadbasket of multiple trades. A compassionate bandit. —Huang Yongyu
In early June 2002, at the "Fei Ma Modern Poetry Symposium" held in Haikou, a literature professor weighed the poet Fei Ma against the scientist Ma Weiye on his value scale and solemnly declared, "Fei Ma is much heavier than Ma Weiye!" He did so with good intentions, aiming to highlight my achievements in modern poetry. But I myself do not measure myself this way. After all, the pen name and the real name both 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 I had left in my luggage to my cousin, who worked at the Guangzhou Customs. He said nothing at the time, but upon my return 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! They are so celebrated in China! Why don’t you just concentrate on your scientific work?" My cousin probably didn’t know that the Nobel Prize has only a handful of winners, and it’s virtually impossible for an engineer to win one. I remember replying, "In the U.S., there are thousands of scientists like me, but only one who writes poems under the name Fei Ma!" A few years ago, when I decided to retire early from Argonne National Laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy, it was 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 wasted, nor have they burdened humanity too much. More importantly, I believe everyone should arrange their lives according to their interests to make the most effective and fulfilling use of their talents. Forcing a general to be a private or a private to be a general is a waste and disaster for society, 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 studied at the Taipei Vocational School, I co-founded a mimeographed journal called Morning Dawn. To make up for the shortage of contributions, 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 due to temporary shortages of content, my articles replaced the column of a famous writer. But later, I 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 heart, full of melodrama during my romantic escapades. But as I grew older, writing poetry gave me an increasingly unsatisfying feeling. Poetry values subtlety, and an unsatisfying feeling is one sign of a good poem. But it often left me feeling incomplete, as if something were missing. I think there might be a wild frontier between poetry and prose. A few years ago, when I had the chance 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 poetry and prose to complement and merge in my work. The feeling of incompleteness remains, but I have found a sense of relief in expressing myself.
Another goal is to let readers know that modern poetry is not as obscure or intimidating as it is often imagined. 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 the internet in recent years 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 paintings and sculptures. 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 waging war on paper, then online publication lacks even the tangible pages to turn, let alone the refreshing scent of ink! In my imagined future of books, Chopin’s piano music will resonate in the air, and readers, holding copies in their hands, will stand or sit. Among them, a young person (not just in age) with moist eyes and a smile on their lips will hold my book, A Heart Moved. This vision stirred a wave of happiness within me, as I described it:
This gentle breeze must come from your sweet sigh,
Now tempting flowers to bloom and release their fragrance,
And stirring ripples of happiness across leaves and me.