relations with indigenous and foreign traditions, Yeh problematizes
the continuing concern with Chineseness over modernity.
Contemporary Poets of Taiwan
The political trajectory of modern China brought with it profound
implications for Chinese poetry, for the emergence of the Maoist brand
of Communism in mainland China meant that after 1949 free expres-
sion in verse was a near impossibility. On the island of Taiwan, by
contrast, poetry flourished during the 1950s in spite of the repressive
nature of the Guomindang (GMD) regime under Chiang Kai-shek.
Whereas Mao took a proprietary interest in poetic production, Chiang
was indifferent to verse, as long as it did not tread too closely to taboo
political subject matter. Under these circumstances, fine Chinese poetry
from Taiwan developed naturally. One of the most beloved poets to
come on the scene in Taiwan in the 1950s was Zheng Chouyu.
In chapter 3, I investigate Zheng’s ability to recover the lyrical, the
melodious, and the musical from traditional Chinese poetry for use in
the creation of contemporary poetry. For Zheng Chouyu, the meaning
of lyrical is found in the indeterminacy of imagery to establish a
sustained and fixed notion in the mind of the reader of a concrete
notion in space. Zheng’s imagery bespeaks a feeling of alienation and
exile and, consequently, of nostalgia. For Zheng Chouyu, the lyric
emerged as the only possible mode of articulation precisely when nar-
rative was ineffective for conveying this sense of alienation. As far as
Zheng is concerned, only the lyric—with its elliptical qualities of half
music, half referential language, part discourse and part object of
art—was suitable for the traumatic reality of the political predicament
of China in mid-century. Zheng’s lyrics flowed freely and vividly and
became an immediate and lasting sensation in Taiwan and elsewhere.
Submerged in the laconic stanzas of Zheng’s short poetry there is a
strong element of political upheaval and historical tumult.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the threat of imminent war hung
over the island of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek’s rule. Having
endured the trauma of two wars, soldiers and civilian refugees from
China found themselves living under martial law, an experience they
shared with the native population of Taiwanese, Hakka, and aborigi-
nal peoples, who had themselves endured the Sino-Japanese War as
colonial subjects of the Japanese and then suffered the predations of
the Nationalist military. During the two decades that followed the
Introduction 3