Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money (Sinica Leidensia, 86)

the lower body 329

and i met this woman called cao yuan we got a little tipsy

and she sang me some shaoxing opera from “the broken bridge”

and i should know now what is meant by roaming eyes

and orchid fingertips scratching the night light

and you’ve got yours and i’ve got mine just one more kiss and nothing else

and i slung on my bag and turned and walked downstairs

and all those me’s shaved heads in threads in the night streets dripping with rain

drip drip drip drip drip drip drip-a-drip

dripping and dripping

now all hail the clap

dripping and dripping

now all hail the clap

drip drip drip drip drip drip drip-a-drip

dripping and dripping

now all hail the clap

dripping and dripping

now all hail the clap

now all hail the clap

now all hail the clap

now all hail the clap

now all hail the clap

....

Especially if read aloud and with the appropriate, relentless drive, such
as during the BNU recital in 2001, «All Hail the Clap» is truly typical
of Shen’s style. It gives a memorable voice to the human experience at
the root of Lower Body poetry: hopeless, yet irrepressible.
It also serves to remind us—with reference to the above discussion
of one-dimensionality and textual shallowness—that many Lower
Body poems are very much suited to the immediacy of recitation. As
for their realization on the page, this is highly worthwhile too, even if
it doesn’t mobilize close-reading strategies in the reader. Lower Body
poetry doesn’t trigger the painstaking interpretation of syntactic am-
biguity or original metaphor, or the identification of sophisticated in-
tertextualities. This does not invalidate its artistic potential, as long as
we allow it to activate the appropriate reading expectations; nor does
it make the context evoked any less relevant and disturbing. On the