Poetry
北斗行
Not translated into English
Yang Mu · 1978
Synopsis
A poetry collection published in 1978. It includes in particular Solitude, in which the poet, drinking alone at dusk, sees solitude take the shape of an old beast that painfully enters his glass and lets itself be tamed there; he accepts it as the very condition of existence. According to The News Lens, the fourth section opens with Wu Feng, the epilogue of a verse drama that the author had devoted in 1976 to this legendary figure of sacrifice, and the collection seeks to give contemporary Chinese letters heroes and a faith.
Context
The collection appeared in 1978 from Hongfan, in Taipei. It belongs to the period when the author was already signing Yang Mu, a name adopted around 1972, when his writing turned more towards society; The News Lens places the change from one name to the other rather in a prose book of 1976. The preface is by the novelist Wang Wen-hsing, who saw in it an important step towards a new order of modern Chinese poetry. La Solitude has been discussed by the poet Luo Qing. No translation of the collection has been found; selections by the author appeared in English in 1993, 1998 and 2018.
Who it is for
Poems to be read one by one; the collection is not translated, but three personal anthologies by the poet exist in English.
Prizes and reception
Taiwan's national cultural memory database lists the collection and comments on its poem Solitude.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.