Selected Poems of Zheng Chouyu (2)

Author: Cheng Chouyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-03-24
Features: Cheng Chouyu, whose birth name is Cheng Wenta, is originally from Hebei. He was born in Jinan, Shandong in 1933. During his childhood, he traveled with his father across the Jiangnan region. After the victory of the War of Resistance, he moved to Beijing and studied at Chongde High School. In 1949, he followed his family to Taiwan. After graduating from university in 1958, he worked at the Keelung Port Authority for many years. In 1968, he went to the United States to study at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, earning a Master of Arts in Fine Arts. Currently, he lives in the U.S. and serves as a professor in the Department of East Asian Literature at Yale University. Both Cheng Chouyu as a person and his poetry exude a sense of mystery. He is an athlete in real life, but in his poems, he portrays a sentimental scholar; he has profound literary cultivation, yet he graduated from a law and business school; as a key figure in the modernist movement, his poetry is filled with classical charm; his poetry is delicate like Li Shangyin, yet bold like Li Bai when he lets his hair down. Many of Cheng Chouyu’s famous poems, such as "The Wrong," "The Sailors’ Knife," and others, often feature travelers as the protagonists. Therefore, he is known as the "Wandering Poet." To this, Cheng Chouyu is not particularly fond of the title. He once said, "Because I grew up during the War of Resistance, I was exposed to the suffering of China and the restless lives of its people. I wrote about these experiences in my poems, and some people called me a ‘wandering poet.’ In reality, what influenced me more during my childhood and youth were the traditional spirit of benevolence and chivalry." Whether it’s benevolence and chivalry or the wandering spirit, in the end, he is "not the type of person who often goes home." Perhaps it is the combination of benevolent chivalry and the wandering spirit that gives Cheng Chouyu’s poetry such moving artistic charm.