Selected Poems of Zheng Chouyu (1)

Author: Zheng Chouyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-11-12
Features: Zheng Chouyu, whose birth name is Zheng Wentao, is originally from Hebei. He was born in Jinan, Shandong in 1933. During his childhood, he traveled around the Yangtze River region with his father. 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 Zheng Chouyu as a person and his poetry exude a sense of mystery. He is an athletic individual, yet his poems depict a sentimental scholar; he possesses profound literary cultivation but graduated from a law and business school; as a key figure in the modernist movement, his poetry is filled with classical charm; his verses are delicate like Li Shangyin's, yet bold like Li Bai's when he lets his emotions run wild. Many of Zheng Chouyu's famous poems, such as "The Wrongful Meeting" and "The Sailor's Knife," feature travelers as their protagonists. Therefore, he is known as the "Wandering Poet." However, Zheng Chouyu does not agree with this label. He says, "Because I grew up during the War of Resistance, I was exposed to China's suffering 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 my childhood and youth more were the traditional spirit of benevolence and chivalry." Whether it's benevolence and chivalry or the spirit of a wandering poet, in the end, "he is not the type of person who often goes home." Perhaps it is the combination of benevolent chivalry and the spirit of a wandering poet that gives Zheng Chouyu's poetry such captivating artistic charm.