学进去

I began writing poems fifteen years ago while I was in college. One day I was in the library, working on a term paper, when I came across a book of contemporary poetry. I don’t remember the title of the book or any of the titles of the poems except one: “Frankenstein’s Daughter.” The poem was wild, almost rude, and nothing like the rhyme-and-meter poetry I had read in high school. I had always thought that poetry was flowery writing about sunsets and walks on the beach, but that library book contained direct and sometimes shocking poetry about dogs, junked cars, rundown houses, and TVs. I checked the book out, curious to read more.

Soon afterward, I started filling a notebook with my own poems. At first I was scared, partly because my poetry teacher, to whom this book is written for, was a serious and strict man who could see the errors in my poems. Also, I realized the seriousness of my devotion. I gave up geography to study poetry, which a good many friends said offered no future. I ignored them because I liked working with words, using them to reconstruct the past, which has always been a source of poetry for me.

When I first studied poetry, I was single-minded. I woke to poetry and went to bed with poetry. I memorized poems, read English poets because I was told they would help shape my poems, and read classical Chinese poetry because I was told that it would add clarity to my work. But I was most taken by the Spanish and Latin American poets, particularly Pablo Neruda. My favorites of his were the odes ― long, short-lined poems celebrating common things like tomatoes, socks and scissors. I felt joyful when I read these odes, and when I began to write my own poems, I tried to remain faithful to the common things of my childhood — dogs, alleys (小巷), my baseball mitt (手套) and the fruit of the valley, especially the orange. I wanted to give these things life, to write so well that my poems would express their beauty.

I also admired our own country’s poetry. I saw that our poets often wrote about places where they grew up or places that impressed them deeply. James Wright wrote about Ohio and West Virginia, Philip Levine about Detroit, Gary Snyder about the Sierra Nevadas and about Japan, where for years he studied Zen Buddhism (禅宗佛教). I decided to write about the San Joaquin Valley, where my hometown, Fresno, is located. Some of my poems are absolute observations and images of nature — the orange yards, the Kings River, the Sequoias (红杉). I fell in love with the valley, both its ugliness and its beauty, and quietly wrote poems about it to share with others.