How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

P e n ta s y l l a biC Sh i P oe t ry : t He “ni ne t e e n ol D P oe m s ” 113

The transformation of the bi-xing construction from an oral formula to a global
structure greatly extended the scope of natural description and emotional expres-
sion. In the Book of Poetry, natural images are few in number, devoid of variety,
and often highly repetitious. Cast in a rigid formula, these images usually do not
link up consecutively and thus cannot form a coherent scene. By contrast, in the
“Nineteen Old Poems,” natural images coalesce into a coherent scene through a
process of perception (poems 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) or narration (poems
1, 4, 6, 8, 16, 18, and 19). The extended scope and the internal coherence of natural
description have not gone unnoticed by critics. For instance, the Tang poet-critic
Wang Changling (698–756) characterized the new bi-xing usage of the “Nineteen
Old Poems” in terms of its extended natural description and its perceptual and
narrative coherence.3 The presentation of the speaker’s inner world also undergoes
profound changes as a result of the evolution of the bi-xing construction. The emo-
tional expression found in these two collections also strikes us as being very differ-
ent from each other. While in the Book of Poetry we hear short, emphatic emotional
utterances about a particular external event, we find in the “Nineteen Old Poems”
a sustained, melancholic reflection on the meaning or, rather, meaninglessness of
human life.

P o e t iC t e x t u r e :

t he D y n a m iC s oF s i l e n t w r i t i n g a nD r e aD i n g

Another important change brought about by the waning of oral performance is the
emergence of a new kind of poetic texture. If poetic structure is the framework
of a poem, poetic texture results from the interface process—borrowing a phrase
from computer science—whereby each word is linked to every other word in an
organic whole. Just as networking denotes a process of multilateral linkage, poetic
texture means a process of multilateral interplay among words in a poetic text. In
examining poetic texture, we seek to understand not only the contiguous relation-
ship of any word with other words in the same line or the same syntactic unit, but
also the noncontiguous relationship of that word with other words placed in either
a corresponding or a noncorresponding position in other lines. To take a concrete
example, when we focus on the third word of line 4 of a pentasyllabic poem, we
must consider, on the one hand, how it links up with the other four words in the
same line and, on the other, how it relates to, say, the fifth word of line 2 or the
third word of line 6.
In performed poetry, by contrast, establishing and maintaining a tight contigu-
ous relationship of words is a task of primary importance. An oral presentation is
essentially a temporal sequence of sounds or auditory signs delivered within an
expected duration of time. Once a composer or performer has started his oral pre-
sentation, he cannot easily stop without frustrating the live audience. Maintaining
a smooth, rhythmic flow of words without the aid of a script is a great challenge
for an oral composer or performer. In the process of his oral delivery, he must
constantly think of what he is to say in the next breath. In making this effort, he