tradition of its own in Modern Chinese Poetry, from Lu Xun ³ ́ to
Shang Qin 商¶(b. 1930), Su Shaolian 蘇 ̧連(b. 1949), and Liu
Kexiang 劉»襄(b. 1957) (Yeh 2000b). The first concrete poem in
Chinese was probably “The Second Obituary of the World”
½¾¿À;Á by the Hong Kong poet Ou Wai’ou Â外Â(1911–95).
The first six lines of the poem read, in English:WAR!
WAR!
WAR!WAR!
WAR!
WAR! WAR!
(Ou 1998)By making the word much larger in lines 4–6 and repeating it twice in
line 6, the poet created the visual effect of the approaching war as well
as an oral simulation of the newspaper boy hawking the special issue
on the street. Written in early 1937, the poem presaged the coming of
the full-blown War of Resistance against Japan.
A more recent example of concrete poetry is Chen Li’s 陳Å
(b. 1954) “War Symphony” 戰ÆÇÈÉ, written in July 1995:兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵兵
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