mind over matter, matter over mind 221key feature of this poetry and its unique contribution to modern Chi-
nese literature.^30
On the metatextual level of critical discourse, my reading of «Sa-
lute» shows that representations of Xi Chuan’s poetry in the money-
fied 1990s as asserting a unidirectional prevalence of mind over matter
or Elevated over Earthly are incomplete at best. His poetry can equally
be seen to show up the prevalence of matter over mind, in the deaths
of poets and otherwise. These two expressions also apply on the level
of our immediate engagement with his work: mind over matter in that
interpreting this poetry more or less contentwise can be extremely re-
warding, and matter over mind in that the formed materiality of his
language takes the lead in this poetry’s realization. This duality is one
of the ways in which the synergy of form and content that is typical of
poetry can make itself felt.
(^30) Perloff 1999: 27-32, 72, 84, 97, 98, 261-263 et passim.