(“mound”). A pictograph, the character qiuevokes graves to which
all the soldiers belong in the end.
What distinguishes this poem from most concrete poems is the
ingenious combination and mutual reinforcement of visual and aural
effects. Not only do the characters bing, ping-pong, and qiugive a
visual representation of the loss of lives in war, but their sounds also
contribute to the structure and meaning of the poem. In the first
stanza, the 384 bing’s create a bright and uplifting, yet at the same
time hard and intimidating, string of sounds. It conjures up the picture
of soldiers marching off bravely. In the second stanza, the gunshots
become fewer and fewer, farther and farther apart as we move down
the lines, which literally captures the diminishing of fighting soldiers
and the winding down of the battle. All three characters—bing, ping,
pong—are open sounds. In contrast, qiuin the last stanza is a closed,
aspirated sound; pronouncing it literally takes longer than the open
sounds in the first two stanzas. While the pictograph qiuvisually
resembles a mound, it is also a homonym of “autumn” Î, the season
of decline that is associated, in traditional Chinese culture, with
change and impermanence, and the concomitant sense of sadness. On
Chen Li’s CD, when he reads the last stanza of the poem, he slows
down considerably and, in protracting the sound qiu, imitates the
whistling wind. Thus, the last stanza not only visually represents row
after row of graves but also aurally suggests the wind blowing across
the graveyard. Progressing from marching soldiers to wounded
soldiers to soldiers in their wind-blown graves, “War Symphony”
makes a powerful statement against war.
Modern Poetry embodies a new paradigm that is radically different
from the revered paradigm of Classical Poetry. The modernity of
Modern Poetry derives from interrelated intrinsic and extrinsic
factors. Externally, the transformation of Chinese society and culture
since the early twentieth century has resulted in the marginalization of
poetry. Having lost the broader social and cultural import that
Classical Poetry enjoyed for centuries, Modern Poetry is, above all, an
individual creative act. Rather than writing for other members of a
sophisticated literary community with similar training and shared
tastes, the Modern Poet is a creator of original works that, through the
modern publishing mechanism, are read by unknown readers from
diverse backgrounds. This condition perhaps accounts for the new
convention of the Modern Poet invoking the Goddess of Poetry Ï
or the Muse ÐÑ, an invocation that did not exist in Classical Poetry
and is clearly a borrowing from the West.24 Michelle Yeh9781403976079ts03.qxp:Layout 1 11/9/07 11:08 AM Page 24