About the Book
"Confucius said that poetry has a didactic function, i.e. to help individuals develop holistic personalities by morality demonstrated through personal influence. Thus, we give lectures that engage us in creating poetry, enabling us to maintain a balance between ideas, feelings, and expressions. Master Zhuang said that literature is a manifestation of Tao--a spontaneous and natural path, unrelated to anything artificial or pragmatic--and that the artist as well as the text are mirrors reflecting the true nature of things.
"The phantasmagorical images in Yin Xiaoyuan's poems, resonating with their historical traditions, refuse to unfold themselves in routine scenes. However strange they may look at first sight, they lead us to the enigmatic beginning of the world--'The Hadean Eon' when densities took shape, configuring the Mind to formulate all concepts. The metaphors have contrived a multi-real scenario, in which masculinity, a principle once appearing to be superior to human subjectivity, is questioned. The scenarios are networks deep in the universe made up of LED screens and mathematics (which happened before the concept of 'time' as we know it) which manifest as possibilities in other dimensions: 'When you glanced away beyond tracks of time, suddenly he came into view, emerging from underneath surface of the ethereal, gleaming with vigor and tenacity. Those attributes of his do not perish with the body, or even with the soul. He is incarnated everywhere, in weather, energy, and even Zen.' Like Octavio Paz said, 'Light is time thinking about itself.'
"The web of metaphors has intertwined particles into dense branches of various greenery in the rhetoric forests in which Nature manifests itself in the form of a threat: 'mass will inevitably function as / A source of light ... A universe suffused with gluons, photons, and mesons-- ... Just in the way souls combine with bodies, / They were blessed with gravity and speed.' Instead of finding the originality of this poetry in its rhythm--the translation from Chinese has set barriers for us in doing so--we find originality in the concept of the poem itself. The author has given us indication of her 'Quantum Ways, ' and only by diving deep into the energy fields and the vibrations within could we find the beams of spooky voices and men classified into various archives by scores set according to their structures, so the reader imagines those supernormal, surrealist forms, navigating themselves across the spaces stretching within the poem.
"Being the initiator of the Hermaphroditic Writing Movement, the poet extends her verses beyond the realms of transcendence and sublimation; the only way to read her poems is by fitting them into a mathematical universe, where the beauty of equations constructed this extraordinary poetic quality, in a space where parallel realities multiply and project themselves on everything: 'The streets that have supplied you with all colors and sounds of life are in a parallel system to theirs.'"
--Concha García, Winner of prizes awarded by Universidad de León (1987), Barcarola (1988), Jaime Gil de Biedma (1995), and Dama de Baza.
About the Author :
Yin Xiaoyuan (Yīn Xiăoyuán (殷晓媛) is an avant-garde, crossover epic poet as well as a trans-genre & multilingual writer. She founded the Encyclopedic Poetry School in 2007, initiated the Hermaphroditic Writing Movement, and was the chief drafter of the Declaration of Hermaphroditic Writing. She is the project planner and visual designer of the Encyclopedic Poetry School A.I. Papercube (10th Anniversary Special Edition), PoetryXPhotographyXManuscripts Album (12th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), 12th Anniversary Commemorative Medallion and HeavenXEarthXMan: 2020 Calendar. She directs the Creative Writing & Integrated Art Workshop, members of which include poets, writers, dramatists, musicians, visual/installation artists, photographers, and calligraphers. She is a member of the Writers' Association of China, the Translators' Association of China, and the Poetry Institute of China. Her works written in Chinese, English, Japanese, German, and French and translated into Italian and Spanish have been published home and abroad. She has translated works of over 120 contemporary poets in U.S., U.K., Sweden, Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Australia, Argentina, Japan, India, Cuba, Chile, Peru, Honduras, Columbia, Bolivia, and Ecuador. She has travelled around China on her own, especially visiting great mountains including Mount Huang, Mount Hua, Mount Heng (Hunan), and Mount Tai, which she summitted on foot. T. V. Petrusenko, of the National Library of Russia, referred to the works by Encyclopedic Poetry School as "a new trend of contemporary Chinese poetry," and Glennys Reyes Tapia, of the National Library Pedro Henríquez Ureña of the Dominican Republic, described them as a "bibliographic treasure of their [Chinese] culture." Crossover artist / Cultural scholar Poet
Review :
"Yin Xiaoyuan's writing is remarkable. The energy it displays in intellectual conception is compelling. So too is the precision and concentrated detail of these verses. This is experimental writing at its best, nurtured within the context of the Encyclopedic Poetry School, which she founded. Yin's poetry ranges confidently over the poetic traditions of both Europe, the USA, and China, modifying and enriching both, borne up by a belief in translation as a crucial and creative stimulus to the inter-play of cultures. Poems such as "Wolfram" are notable for their exhilarating command of English, lexis is confident and expansive; rhythms are sustained yet exciting; argument and dramatic voice carry to fine conclusions. Lines such as these are highly original and deserve to be greeted with the utmost enthusiasm."--Robin Kirkpatrick, Professor emeritus, Italian and English Literatures, Cambridge University
"Xiaoyuan's exciting poetry charts a new path in contemporary Chinese poetry, and this beautiful volume shows her poetic gifts on full display. The rich inventiveness of her poems stems from a combination of her compositional virtuosity, the use of different linguistic and conceptual domains, and the experience gathered from her prolific activity as a poet engaged in translating poems from many cultures. Her poems reveal a deeply original and welcome voice in the panorama of contemporary Chinese verse. An avant-garde artist, she has created a series of unpredictable and stunning poems, which testify to the ingenuity of her poetic talent."--Jacob Blakesley, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation, University of Leeds
"Yin Xiaoyuan is the founder of E.P.S.--an emerging group of Chinese poets who--by offering new paradigms for the mixing of genres in the Encyclopedic Poetry Movement--have transformed writing with breathtaking language juxtapositions, with the introduction of innovative scientific subject matter, and with astonishing, non-linear representations of reality. Her poetry pushes language to the brink of the undefinable, where the ordinary through a miracle of imaginative alchemy becomes numinous. Yin Xiaoyuan's poetry is powerful, bold, and uncompromising."--Bill Wolak, Poet, photographer, collage artist, professor
