TOP82-DES79
This Old Poem #82:
Wang Ping’s Syntax
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 2/1/04
Everybody have
fun tonight,
everybody Wang
Ping tonight....
Wang Ping was born in Shanghai, China and came to New York in 1985. Her books include American Visa, a book of short stories, and Foreign Devil, a novel, both published by Coffee House. Her book of poetry Of Flesh and Spirit is forthcoming from Coffee House. She is the recipient of Nation Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and New York State Council for the Arts grants for her poetry and translations.
The lady not only traffics with the vile Coffeehouse Press, but teaches at the U of M(innesota), & the vilest place of them all- the seamy The Loft! Of course, WP is not really a poet- she’s a fictionist who’s hoping that her resumé- strengthened by being a ‘poet’- will carry her to the financial remuneration many a bad PC Elitist dreams of whilst suckling on the filthy teat of Academia. Her poetry is bad, but her fiction is worse. Here’s an excerpt from a short story called ‘Ten Bodies’, posted at http://www.lapetitezine.org/WangPing.htm:
What
is he afraid of, I often wonder? Is it possible that fear is programmed into his
genes? The day he was conceived, I started having violent dreams: mass
massacres, bodies roasted alive, babies gnawed to the bones by rats. He'd often
stop whatever he is doing, and listen to some inaudible sound at distance, his
chocolate brown eyes glazed with doubts. What is it, mama, what is it? And I can
only hold his hands to keep him from slipping further into the abyss. One day,
after I dug out his stool hard as rocks, streaked with blood, his babysitter
gave me a bottle of laxatives she brought from China. I shook my head. Wei has
to overcome this by himself. He must not become used to the medicine and depend
on it for the rest of his life.
Di squirms, kicks, cries, his
chest puffing in and out as he hollers into his father's ear. Ayden groans and
turns to the side. Wipe his behind with Kleenex. Give him a snorter and run to
get warm water. Wei calls it blue ice cream. Di screams when I use it to suck
out his snot, but loves to chew it. Sponge his eyes, cheeks, nose, hands, feet,
and bottom. Baby moisturizer on his face, Vaseline on his penis, then diaper and
clothes. His stomach has folds, thighs full of dimples. I pinch and tickle. He
curls with laughter, pulling my finger into his mouth.
Yes, it’s only 2 paragraphs- BUT, who would want to read such a leadenly melodramatic piece of puerility like that? Besides, of course, a fiction contest judge? Then, again, perhaps it is the relentless buzzsaw of PC Elitist sycophancy that encourages talentless hacks like WP to continue? Witness reviews of WP’s book The Magic Whip:
Booksense.com:
"Accomplished writer/novelist/scholar/essayist Ping's latest is a typically stunning collection of poetry and prose. Using anataomically (sic) obsessed imagery to explore themes of motherhood, family, ethnicity, and personal history, The Magic Whip attempts to find the sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes reassuring bonds that tie the past with the present. Her elegant and personal works touch on Chinese myths and legends; the ancient Chinese practice of footbinding; Tibet's political situation; and the infinitely complex relationship between a mother and her daughter."
Here’s all you need to know as to where this generic review came from: ‘the sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes reassuring bonds’. The either/or blurb (in the review’s body) is something that has risen to absolute dominance since the early 1980s. More:
Library Journal:
"Ping's thoughtful poetry
explores how a Chinese American woman's cultural identity, the 'tangled roots of
home,' is formed. In a variety of genres that use stories, folklore, ancient
menus, ritual song, and superstition, Ping offers gritty description of life in
China and Chinatown while pleading for compassion for women victimized by the
traditions of arranged marriages, concubinage, and a preference for male
children….Probing oppression, exile, and the loss of the mother tongue, these
candid poems advocate equality and cultural diversity."
Any poem that ‘explores’ & ‘advocates’ is sure to bore. The correct term is ‘preach’. Onward:
Booklist:
"The whip of the title was
the waist-length pigtail of a young girl, the symbol of her nubility and untried
sexuality, and as such, analogous to the bound "lotus foot" that kept
Chinese women virtually immobile and, perhaps for that reason, held erotic power
for men. Shanghai-born Wang Ping braids the two emblems of sexual status
together in this book's disturbing title poem, chiming their images with men's
traditional queues, shaven pubic hair, hair bleach, permanent waves, and other
tokens of power and sex…her compelling juxtapositions jar the reader into
experiencing insight."
I’ll show you 1 of WP’s ‘compelling juxtapositions in the poem in question in just a mo’. On to a final huzzah:
Clayton Eshleman:
"At the Chinese-American crossroads, Wang Ping confronts us with a sinewy, witty nostalgia for the harsh but deep reality of Chinese customs and culture."
‘Fess up time. CE posted a few pieces on Cosmoetica before having a conniption at Arthur Durkee so take my comment on his comment with that in mind, but CE is obviously looking for newer, younger poets to blurb back for his next book because how the hell is nostalgia sinewy?
On to the titular ‘poem’:
Syntax
She walks to a table
She walk to table
She is walking to a table
She walk to table now
What difference does it make
What difference it make
In Nature, no completeness
No sentence really complete thought
Language, like woman,
Look best when free, undressed.
Here is a 1st. I’m gonna let the poet in question review the poem & then I’ll review the review, before I take a knife to this piece of shit. Wait, did I tip my hand? Here’s from an online interview. Go Google it yourself!:
Interviewer: Was your poem "Syntax" an attempt at validating "incorrect" usage of the English language, usage that somehow positively alters the way we speak?
WP: Yes. This poem came out of a conversation I had with a poet named Leonard Schwartz. I was talking to him and I made a grammatical mistake. He was correcting me and I said "What difference does it make?" I suddenly realized I could write a poem out of that. I wanted to explore the relationship between language and nature, language and the body, language and culture.
Take away the poet’s name & this becomes doggerel in the mind of any reviewer. Add a Euro name & this becomes ‘racist stereotyping’ of non-Euros. Note the trite ‘explanation’, too, of a ‘poet’ wanting to ‘explore’. Do you mean to tell me there was nothing of deeper meaning to explore than this little idea? Not to mention doing so with more depth?
Interviewer: In the first couplet, would the line "She walk to table" be a literal translation of what a Chinese person would say?
WP: Yes. In Chinese we have almost no grammar. We don't have third person singular -- you don't need to put an s after a verb. We don't really have past tense, or verb changes according to the rule of tenses. Occasionally we add one word to indicate the past. Mostly, though, the way we indicate time depends on a context that we're in.
Great. How about music, or duplicity for a poem?
Interviewer: If that's the case, what's the tension here between the correct grammar line and the literal translation line?
WP: Well, I'm not so sure about this specific case, but I know that I have to think about English in an entirely different way then I think about Chinese. I don't think about Chinese -- its roots, where it came from -- because it's my mother tongue. When I write in English, though, I have to think about the root of the word -- I have to go to the root a lot of times. I have to check things all the time -- in this way I find a lot of things that a native speaker might not notice. I like this, because I like the feeling of getting at the roots of language, the origins of language.
Translation: There is no tension- another tool of real poetry. But WP’s still ‘exploring’!
Interviewer: What do you think the relationship of your line "No sentence really complete thought" is to your own poetics?
WP: That line is a direct influence from Ezra Pound. Ernest Fenollosa's book The Chinese Written Character As a Medium for Poetry, which has an introduction by Ezra Pound, was very important for me. This taught me that the Chinese language is a kind of natural bridge between language and poetry. That book really started me thinking about the basic elements of language -- how we should go back to the roots and come out with a fresh angle. Also, it made me think about how grammar and language without syntax affect the way we see things. Chinese bears an internal logic even though there's hardly any grammar -- I believe it's close to nature, to cycles of movement. A sentence is very forced, in a way, especially the way it ends with a period. The natural way of how things move tends to be more continuous than a grammatically correct line allows for, which is how I tend to write. I encourage my students to rethink how the human mind works, especially in terms of language. After all, the way we think is not limited to grammatically correct ways of speaking and writing. Instead, we think more continuously (sic). When my students “get” this, it frees them up to write in more experimental, fragmentary, and natural ways. Lots of fragments, juxtapositions.
Here we get 3 hallmarks of rationalizing bad poetry: namedropping (Pound & Fenollosa), naturalism (Chinese’s affinity to nature’s cycles), & faux philosophy (WP’s advice to her students). Mix this with any other comment & you get a nice quote that means absolutely nothing.
Interviewer: What advice would you give a student who is a speaker of English as a second language if that student is, like you were, determined to write English-language poetry?
WP: Try to take advantage of your purported shortcomings. Treat each word as if it was a toy. Imagine that you're in a huge playground of language, and have fun with the words. At the same time, introduce your own culture into the poem, bring in your mother-tongue language into it. Do a lot of literal translations, even transcriptions with the sound of a foreign word in your poem.
Not bad advice- yet notice how poetasters NEVER follow the occasional gem that spills from their lips?
Interviewer: How would you say you've incorporated your Chinese culture into your poetry?
WP: I spell out Chinese words phonetically when I want to go into old Chinese sayings and proverbs. These things are so coated with years and years of wisdom and cultural dust. I try to go in and bring out what was originally there. I also look at Chinese language and culture via the English language -- it's fun to do that.
Interviewer: Is there anything you'd like to add in terms of how you might teach "Syntax" to writing students?
WP: This poem is playful with language and grammar. I also want to link language with body. In many cases, much women's clothing is too important -- some clothing hides or alters women's natural form, it makes them into an adornment. I like to have students think of how language might be used to challenge that kind of thing, which is why I write in such a spare way in "Syntax." That's why I write "Language, like woman, / Look best when free, undressed".
WP calling this poem ‘spare’- in relation to her corpus- is like Ed Wood calling ‘Glen or Glenda’ compelling in relation to his cinematic legacy.
Interviewer: So your poem is, in a sense, a metaphor for -- and almost a critique of -- "woman" as ornament, woman as fully-clothed, painted. It reveals your poetics, too. One can determine that you don't go for either ornament or rhetorical excess in poetry.
WP: Yes, I would say so. The more I write, the more I realize how alive and violent language can be, and how influential language has been in playing a role in our minds and unconscious. We have to be careful, because a lot of times we think we are masters of language, but most of the time we are not. That's the danger of being a poet, but also the fun and challenge of being a poet.
Poetry as danger. Where have I heard that canard before? Let’s look at this poem again & then rip it:
Syntax
She walks to a table
She walk to table
She is walking to a table
She walk to table now
What difference does it make
What difference it make
In Nature, no completeness
No sentence really complete thought
Language, like woman,
Look best when free, undressed.
Syntax
Language, like woman,
Look best when free, undressed.
Not quite
there with old Pound’s In A Station Of The Metro, but better. This
couplet says everything the earlier ‘examples’ in the ‘poem’ purport to
show. The difference is we don’t need the dull examples, if not potentially
discriminatory- nor do we need the next 4 lines of philosophizing. It’s all in
the last couplet. It says what the prior 8 lines show. Usually showing is
better, but here, what is shown is so dull that getting it over as quickly as
possible is the best course. Brevity, in other words, trumps all else!
I was gonna
quote from a lengthy piece on WP’s being hailed as a ‘revolutionary’. But
why bother? What could that teach you that my rewrite, & WP’s interview
has not already shown? Mainly that I should’ve hit the dance floors in the
1980s a bit harder. I may have gotten more regular nooky, Sooky!
Everybody have
fun tonight,
everybody Wang
Ping tonight....
Final Score: (1-100):
Wang Ping’s Syntax: 40
TOP’s
Syntax: 55
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