>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. [ Silence ] >> My name is Rob Casper and I'm the head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. The center is delighted to cosponsor tonight's event Contemporary Poets from China, a reading in discussion with the Asian Division at the Library and presented in partnership with Copper Canyon Press and the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to Franklin Odo of the Asian Division, Michael Wiegers from Copper Canyon and Penny Ojeda from the National Endowment of the Arts for all their hard work to make this evening possible. I should let you know too that the Poetry and Literature Center sponsors also to programs like this and if you wanna find out more about our programming, you can visit our website at www.loc.gov/poetry. We are thrilled tonight to feature Poets Xi Chuan and Zhou Zan, you can find out more about both poets on your print program and I hopefully you all got a copy. And I have some extra ones so if you didn't, just raise your hand and we can get you one. It's on the back. They will be reading their own poems and other favorite poems from the new anthology, Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China just put out by Copper Canyon Press as part of an international literate exchange between the National Endowment for the Arts and the general Administration of press and publication in the People's Republic of China. And please-- please come forward and there are bunch of seats. A little bit about the structure of tonight's program, each poet will read-- actually they'll read back and forth for about half and hour and they'll stand up and read a few poems and then sit down. Xi Chuan will read his poems in Chinese and in English and Zhou Zan will read hers in Chinese as well. We have a very special guest tonight to read the English translations of Zan's poems, award winning poet and translator in Georgetown Professor, Carolyn Forche. We will follow with a moderate discussion with both poets and Copper Canyon Press executive editor, Michael Weigers about the process of creating this anthology and open up for the last few minutes for questions from you. And I should say too that we have copies of the anthology available outside for sale afterwards and I'm sure Michael and the poets would be more than happy to sign their copies for you. So, please welcome our poets. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> Should I? Oh, sorry. [ Pause ] >> Well, I'm really, really, excited to be here and I felt this is a big honor for me to have this opportunity to read some of my poems in this room-- in this building and, well, lots of thanks to Copper Canyon and to all the people I met here. So, I'm going to read-- first, I'm going to read two of my poems then Zhou Zan is going to-- Zhou Zan and Carolyn Forche is going to read Zhou Zan's poems. And the poems I'm going to read-- the first poem I'm going to read is a short poem entitled My Grandma. Actually, it's not really about my grandma. [Laughter]. My grandma died when my father was 9 years old so, it's about a grandma because we have grandmas and many grandmas in China and I took all of them as my grandma. So, this is My Grandma in first Chinese. [ Foreign Language ] >> My grandma. My grandma coughs waking a one thousand roosters. A thousand roosters crowed waking ten thousand people. Ten thousand people walked out of the village, roosters in the village crowing still. The rooster crowing stops, my grandma coughing still. My still coughing grandma mentions her grandma. Her voice getting softer as if it were my grandma's, grandma's voice getting softer. My grandma talks and talks then stops shutting her eyes as if it were only now that my grandma's grandma really died. The second poem has-- actually it's a part from one of my long poems. The whole piece of this poem is called, "What the Echo Says." It's something-- yeah, it's-- this is the title-- general tittle but this part-- I'm sorry. But this part is something about in a dark room, in a dark room. [ Foreign Language ] >> In a dark room I put my ear to the wall, listening in but don't hear anything stirring in the neighbors next door. Then suddenly I hear someone next door with an ear to the wall as well. Quickly, I put my ear back, sure to behave like an upright and proper man. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the dark room, I should not wake from a good dream when my father wakes from a bad dream. He reprimands me and his reprimands are valid. I turned in prospective completely loyal and filial. I tell him my good dream so he could have his own but his good dream was already forgotten in the bathroom. [ Foreign Language ] >> After a brush with death and a ascetic becomes a philandered. [ Foreign Language ] >> One handsome young man kills two handsome young men just because they all look the same. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the dark room, I have seance with smoke and mirrors. Some fool really does walk in the door and kneel down before me. I kick him away, continuing my indulgence. When another fool breaks down the door, welding a butcher knife to over throw me. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the dark room, I turned on the radio. Its melodramatic love story awakens my self pity. Just then, a burglar crawls out from under my bed, engages me in a discussion of the meaning of life and vows right then to turn over new leave. [ Foreign Language ] >> An enthusiast of the Analects of Confucius refutes another enthusiast of the Analects of Confucius to a bloody pulp. [ Foreign Language ] >> Du Fu has received too much exaltation. So no other Du Fu could ever win anything. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the dark room, I fan over a dead man. He was not my ancestor but my neighbor. I create for him a life of glory, his cast iron face flushed with pink many years later I overeat at the home of his grandson. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the darkroom I paint a portrait of a fictitious girl. An acquaintance says, he recognizes the girl in the picture. She lives in the east district, 35 Springweed Lane. I find the place but her neighbor says, she's just left on a long journey. [ Foreign Language ] >> Faced with an emptied grave, the giddy grave robber has nothing to do. [ Foreign Language ] >> With nothing to do, the line cook goes back to his dark room. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the darkroom, my gold ring passed down for 3 generations, rolls on to the floor, never to be seen again. Therefore, I suspect that beneath my darkroom is another darkroom. Therefore, I suspect that everyone whoever wore a gold ring lives beneath me. [ Foreign Language ] >> In the darkroom, some guy comes in the wrong door but tries to make the most of it. He puts down his backpack, washes his face and brushes his teeth and then orders me to get out. I said that, this is my home, this is my lifeline, I'm not going anywhere. And so we start to wrestle in the darkness. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> It's great honor to be here. Thank you, pleasure [inaudible] here and thank you Kenny Praise [phonetic]. I'm going to read two short poems at first. [ Foreign Language ] [ Pause ] [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Artisans, he once studied under a famous master and used molds. He honed his skill to perfection and left samples of his work, one masterpiece covering the next. The teachers praised, customers rushed to purchase. Now, he has left everyone behind and lost in thought, with all his heart and soul, he takes up a piece of stone to sculpt as he pleases. As he waits, a new life is born. It has form but perhaps is in no way graceful. Maybe he can open its mouth and speak or maybe it will just keep silent. Maybe she has been groping all along starting from the very first thread. She takes it up, weaves it, tangles it and connects it in without master or pattern but gradually, from within this web of threads, she finds things coming together and a direction to her network of threads emerges. She realizes that life has already begun and carelessly, employs her happiest feeling, maybe her creation will make her famous or maybe she will never be known. [ Pause ] [ Foreign Language ] [ Pause ] >> Jay [phonetic]. She always heard they're talking could translate it like Gongye Chang who understood the language of birds. One of the Jays returned from a far journey full of herself, chattering about her adventures. The other Jays screeched at her. Some believed, some doubted. >> They made such a rocket that the tale teller raised her voice long and loud, proudly at first and sad as if her secret was out. She was so tired-- she refused to go on. She refused to enlighten these fools and mom always criticized her, called her a burden of talking. "Shut up, Jay! You're too small, you can't even carry things." But one day, a Jay died under the Locust tree fell from the nest of sleep, her beak firmly closed, but she was too young, couldn't translate death's silence. [ Applause ] >> So, next poem I'm going to read is [foreign language] A Song of No Matter. [ Foreign Language ] >> A Song of No Matter. Whether a fly is called fly matters not, that it's buzzing is getting louder matters not, that it has a belly full of ink and pisses blue matters not, that it has decided to be an exemplary fly matters not. You and I make not a peep. That when the fly flies away the [inaudible] somebody matters not. That he's chatting up a storm matters not. He says, he's so smart they will love him up in heaven then lives. Whether he will be the smartest person in heaven matters not. You and I make not a peep. But not just you and I make not a peep, nor do the telephone-- nor do the telephone pole outside always shifting shadow, that a kite has hanged itself on the telephone pole matters not. That we've run a hundred and eight thousand miles around the pole matters not. The last one-- the last one-- this is actually, this is not a poem. I wrote lots of prose-poems after in nineties and until now. This is a piece, a piece of a poem included in that book Push Open the Window. It's called Exercises-- Exercises in Thought, [foreign language]. I'll just-- in order to save the time, I'll just read the English translations. My poems are translated by-- by Lucas Klein [phonetic]. Exercises in Thought. It's a poem, I mentioned Nietzsche, the German philosopher here. I try to make a response to Nietzsche's ideas putting a Chinese way of thinking. And it seems that I'm-- I tried to be away from Nietzsche but actually-- but actually I'm trying to follow Nietzsche. And I have two Chinese names here. One is Wang Guowei who-- who is a person who lived by the end of nineteenth century and early twentieth century and he-- he's the person who introduced Nietzsche's ideas, philosophy to the Chinese society. And another person I mentioned here, a Chinese person named Lu Xun, a writer who's regarded as the greatest twentieth century Chinese-- Chinese writer. So it's-- it goes like this. Exercises in Thought. Nietzsche said, re-evaluate all values. So let's re-evaluate-- let's re-evaluate the value of this toothbrush. Perhaps the toothbrush isn't a toothbrush or perhaps the toothbrush isn't simply a toothbrush. If we refuse to re-evaluate the value of a toothbrush, we are re-evaluating the value of Nietzsche. Nietzsche thought, when we are in thought makes us brazen and shameless. But does that mean that we aren't brazenly mimicking the-- the singing of the sparrow, shamelessly mimicking the silence of white clouds? Does that mean that we aren't brazenly and shamelessly being brazen and shameless? At times, even if we can't figure out the [inaudible] and the [inaudible], we still pretend to be in thought. Like a fly crawling passed one word to another, pretending to understand a poem. Many people pretend to be in thought, proving thought to be a beautiful thing. But the bald man doesn't need a comb, the tiger doesn't need weapons, the fool doesn't need thought. The person with no needs is practically a sage but the sage also needs to count rivets on iron bridges to pass time. This is the difference between the sage and the fool. Nietzsche said, a person must discover 24 truths each day before he can have a good night sleep. But first of all, a person shouldn't find that many truths. All the world's supply of truth will exceed demand. Secondly, any one who discovers that many truth would hardly be able to force [inaudible] so I guarantee you Nietzsche never slept. Or if he did fall asleep, he was a sleepwalker. A sleepwalker will never meet another sleepwalker. Nietzsche never met God. Hence, he's proclamation, God is dead. But did Nietzsche ever met Wang Guowei? No. Did he meet Lu Xun? No. Did he ever meet brazen and shameless me? Still, no. So perhaps this Nietzsche never existed after all just as the word spirit may mean nothing whatsoever. Thought is like flying. Though flying gives you vertigo which is why I don't always want to be in thought. Thought is like a bad habit. Though bad habits give you the full flavor of life which is why I sometimes want to be in thought. I demand that Turnips, bok choy and I all be in thought together. I demand that chickens and dogs and cows and sheep and I all be in thought together, thought is a kind of desire and I demand all aesthetics admit it and I demand all hedonists accept it. Those exercising athletes, they exercise and exercise till they collapse from so much exercise. People who've seen too much may as well go blind. To stop being in thought, you may as well think as much as you can. Think until you go stupid. So your incarnation is a person has not been in vain. The depletion of a person that was Nietzsche's work, to deplete a person, that is to make him a Superman, that is to make him pull out all his lighting rods and what's more, make him stick like a lightning rod out-- out of the earth. Regarding the principles of thought, one, to be in thought in the puzzle and bustle of the marketplace is one thing. >> To be in thought beside a stream is something else. Two, thought isn't an exercise filling blanks. Thought is making a fresh start. Three, someone who has thought add infinitum even if he's pessimistic scenic will still clap his hands and laugh and louder laugh all on his own. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> I'm gonna read-- the poem I'm going to read now is also a short poem called New Snow. [ Foreign Language ] [ Pause ] >> New Snow. Snow falls, takes flight. Roof and floor compressed to a single storey. Mysteriously barring and suppressing the sound of the winds rolling, screeched of faraway breaks and the air whose melody, the motor growling lightly below. All our sounds are falling snow. Filling the sky, everything covered over, splintered. As ten thousand echoes are night wings flying 'til morning or daydreams, dancing 'til night falls. Does snow have wings? Has a pure white engine and ice cold stirring wheel drives to my window along a blue highway, but its more astronaut than race car drive, one who falls by another planet toward earth's weightlessness. It's like the indulgences of love, fantasies and that what is fire is actually close by, attack at my window pane announces. Wait, I'm coming to get you to go wherever you want to go. Spring festival has passed. The first snow fall. This is new snow falling in my morning. [ Applause ] >> The last poem I'm going to read is like a little bit longer and I want just to read it in three sections in Chinese. [ Pause ] [ Foreign Language ] [ Pause ] [ Foreign Language ] Thank you. [ Pause ] >> Mr. Zhang San Rides through Town on a Minibus. One. 5 PM. Do what you want to your heart's content. The destination's unknown: one often meets his sober introspection; he puts his best foot forward, already knowing the cost of his travels: what guides him is an imagined freedom that promptly stops beckoning, its bargain: mind drills. He gives the hawker his ferry boat fare. This paragraph requires a path enriched with imagining; first he seeks out a seat for his self. >> Facts of his being on the road needn't be handed over like those of the official in a picaresque novel, narrated by an ant army and read by saliva, not woven into culture and history by the printing press. Setting down his drab briefcase, he shifts his gaze outside the window. His new POV replaces the double-sized scorched fantasy photos. Like a painter who yearns to be a robot, he'd rather be a speeding camcorder, discarding a smudged post-Expressionist oil painting. Two. Please imagine a machine's relaxed mood. Death, which alters appearances, wields fragmentary limbs and body, but each part represents the whole, says, "If it only listens attentively to death, my entire life is not life, but suffering." Harboring his cautious dread, he returns to people: Li Ke Long's second floor resembles a weary dyspeptic stomach, directly across from Shuang An Department Store, where one pair of huge kids cut from paper emit intermittent mutters distorted by car horns. Cross the street; skywalk the stiff underside of a dog's belly, the road cut up in paperbacks; open the back cover to offer sacrifices to the blue-clothed god who reads, analyzes, drafts anew a complete oeuvre on human behavior in ten moralizing commandments. He thinks his mood is Dante's entering the forest as he steps into the exclusive minibus. Three. "We ourselves become lines of poetry written by books-- " Case in point: at this section of road, we're unable to locate the imagined components of narrative, a plot. Alone, the minibus's lyrical rhythm can't lull the postindustrial masses. He endures his fleeting nature at the bus stop, as if it were a self-indulgent fever. Bus stops: Taiping Zhuang, Nonglin Ju, Madian, Jing'an Zhuang: they're either the city's mosquitoes or fluttering characters in the midst of a crowd's raucousness; yet this silk brush might as well stop him from using women around him to bear the complicated experience of the gaze. He, Mr. Zhang San, an ordinary man, is possessed of some natural rights. "Among women, who is most fond of shopping where: Qiancun Department Store, Instec, or the Lufthansa Center?" You can only guess by the clothing-- his darling wife stays at home and she knows her women's hobbies, one among these women was in love with traitor Yu Yongze; his arrest stems from his dear gluttonous wife's hobby. Four. Parcel of pig liver and confidential Party materials, love or revolutionary enterprise, these are antitheses in the books he's read; the question he has no time for allegorized by passengers getting on and off in turn: "Those who want to get on, get on; if it's your stop, say something" history's meaning found in excessive annotations of ordinary speech. But why must his identity be made clear? Why does the author not want to discover something about him he cannot find? He takes a calculator from his briefcase, checks how much his business has earned. His youth is promising; is his seat on the minibus nothing more than a mark of the nouveau riche? "Will have bread, will have everything." He admires the Marlboro pressed between his fingers, distinguished emblem of two esteemed cultures, characters: Act! Victory lies ahead! Yet he identifies himself with the cigarette: "I am being burned to the utmost degree by my own flame and curl up in my own smoke." Five. "She left home beneath a cloud." Now he can't not remember his old love; this boring era couldn't propagate the complex desires of postcoloniality: not missing a beat, Private Second Class Wang Er brings back the past, like a cigarette's anger and depression; now elsewhere, she plays the lover's role. At that time they were thought happily earnest which, according to some definitions means "sincere." It's all been done before: romance, jealousy, self-pity, hateful eyes, the begging, giving up no more than indifference with verbs and adjectives-- the emotions they manipulate, keywords of an adolescent thesis. But always the body first summons wisdom, prolegomenon of phenomena's ultimate proposition, inferior to imagination's pleasures as it arrives at the other shore. Sublimated to her form, however blurred, he draws the support of a few images: is one woman not all women? But is he himself? Six. He savors abstract rain water in the concrete wind: "If oceans are doomed to break dams, then let the bitter waters empty into my heart." In an instant, he sees his hand holding a spear; he charges the enemy position, these old incompetent swerves with astonishing speed, his misconceived Terminator screams sweeping past the small hotel and food stalls beside the road. He stretches. "Our sleep, our hunger." The corner turns, he gallops outside God's reasoned commandments, the field of civil rule colored lights that wind around branches, like ads on public billboards lining up to guard the country's great festivals. "The world related to me, oh!" But who, based on his immaculate dress, gleans his classical view of the whole world? Odysseus is finally returning home. Getting along in years, nearing death in a scenic poem, Mr. Zhang San gets off at Nongzhan Guan, changes buses, jumps on another minibus; after half an hour, the mousy-haired missus opens the many-locked door and greets him-- the color of the sky darkened long ago, maze of asphalt debauched with red lanterns, green wine; in the next poem he encounters Mephistopheles, but for now he shakes off the glare of three lights at the intersection, following me as I trudge into night's dim territory. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> Thanks to our poets for that reading and to Carolyn Forch for her English rendition of-- of these poems. So I just have a couple of questions then I'll open up the floor to you all to ask questions if you like. I just want to start with Michael Wiegers. As the executive editor of Copper Canyon, I'll ask him a little bit about how this anthology came to be and how it fits into the other kinds of books he publishes. >> Well, a couple of years ago, we were invited to apply for a-- to a program through the National Endowment for the Arts, an International Literary Exchange wherein we-- we were asked to publish a book of an anthology poetry from China and it was the fifth in the series of books that the National Endowment for the Arts have been doing with other countries are actually the sixth starting with Mexico and then Russia and Pakistan and Northern Ireland and then most recently with this book from China. The book itself in terms of the actual coming together, the idea of this anthologies is that an American editor will create an anthology of American poets similar to this to be published overseas in the colleague countries so at the same time that this book is being published, a book of American poetry has been translated into Chinese and published in China and an American editor compiled that manuscript. And similarly, a Chinese editor King Ping compiled the poems that were in-- that came to be in this book and we chose the-- or rather the National Endowment for the Arts chose a translation editor to oversee who would be translating the works. In terms of the final book itself, what happened is we had, as part of our proposal, we had asked for actually more than we could use, we wanted to have a large selection of poems and Mr. King Ping sent-- sent us, I think originally it was somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven hundred pages of poems in Chinese which we then or the translation editors went through with Copper Canyon to find out which poems have already been translated in this country which had already been published and we tried to put together an anthology that is essentially representative of the last twenty years of poetry in China. That's kinda broad overview. >> And what does it offer you in Copper Canyon Press in terms of complimenting the American poets that you are publishing? >> Well, I think that as with the National Endowment for the Arts, we have a real commitment to poetry in translation to literature, in translation from other languages and I think much of American poetry not only influences in poetries around the world, as you can see in this anthology, but it's-- it's influenced by poetry particularly Copper Canyons in Washington State and I think particularly the poetries coming out of-- coming out of the West Coast of this country tend to look across the Pacific whereas, you know, traditionally, you know, poets had looked across the Atlantic toward Europe. And so I think that there's some affinities between the type of poets that we've been publishing, but then also we've had a long tradition at Copper Canyon of publishing poetry from the classical Chinese and from Japanese and Vietnamese. And so I would say that in addition to how it complimented the-- the Contemporary American Poetry that we published it was also continuing some of the-- the legacy that we've-- we've created by publishing Hanshan or Su Dongpo or Dao Chen or-- or the poems of the masters anthology of T'ang and Sung dynasty poets, so. >> I thought I would ask both our poets about the anthology itself. Of course, an anthology is sort of like a big party where you're spending time with all sorts of different guests and I wondered if the two of you were surprised by anyone here who showed up in the anthology with you. If you knew many of the poets who were there with you, if there were some great new discoveries on your part? [ Pause ] >> Well, actually before this book, I-- I know that here in the United States there were I think several books on contemporary Chinese poetry, but this for me I think this is the best. And-- and the editor because I know the editor, the editor, he is really in-- he himself Ching Ping, he himself is a poet and also-- so he knows whom to-- to choose, to select and so it's-- it's a picture. I think it's a-- it's a good picture on contemporary Chinese poetry. >> Were there any surprises in there? Were there people that you hadn't heard of that you were thrilled to discover? >> I think I know about 85 percent of the poets from this book, but still two or three names. For me they are really-- they are fresh names. >> Yeah. Zhou Zan, you also read from the Talisman House Anthology and I wondered how you might feel about how the two connected to each other. >> Its different to choose and Push Open the Window, I think it's more-- more big groups to small poets and to [inaudible] a book just to several poets [inaudible] small group. And also I think those books are quite good for American readers to understand Chinese contemporary poetry. I just feel maybe we can choose some other good winning poets into the book. [ Laughter ] >> If I can jump in quickly, when we were printing together this book we did-- we looked specifically to that anthology. We looked to Michelle Yeh's anthology as well. And we looked at-- we looked at a number of the anthologies to which Xi Chuan is referring to see not only who's been represented in those but who hasn't and which poems. So when we knew that we were going to publish these two poets who are represented in the other anthologies, we want to make certain we weren't duplicating poems that we're complimenting what was already being published. And-- and so, you know, I think it's fair to say that with any anthology, an anthology is going to be defined as much by who's included as it is by who's left out. And so we looked-- we looked at to-- to somebody's issues such as, you know, having more women represented in the book. I think the original manuscript had even fewer women and so trying to get a greater balance that also pushing to have a few more younger poets represented in the book. And-- and, you know, at the same time that I don't even read Chinese so I'm not going to be the expert here and so defer it to Mr. King Ping and to our translation editors to really be the specialists and-- and know who should be represented. I think one of the things that-- that is perhaps most interesting to me and exciting about the anthology is that it truly is a collaboration across different arts, our cultural agencies, different editors and different translators. We as well I think one of the things that you'll find in the other anthologies is that the translators are all fairly, you know, fairly well published and fairly well represented and we wanted to at least bring in some younger translators to give them a shot at-- at having an audience >> Anyone out there? How many questions? We have a mic which-- if you could just-- if you could just raise your hand, we can give you the mic and then-- so we can get the question on tape. >> I'd like to congratulate you on this anthology, and Michael it's a wonderful project and I hope there'll be more anthologies that the National Endowment for the Arts will support as well and welcome to the United States, we're very happy to have you here, I very much enjoyed reading your work. >> I think some of us are a bit curious, forgive my ignorance, but I'd love to know a little bit about what life is like for poet in China? Do you have a lot of literary magazines? Do you give readings? Do you teach in universities? What is the literary culture like for poet today? >> Okay. We have-- well, actually it's-- we have many poets in China but in general this big, big population of poets can be divided into three groups. So one group is-- this is the biggest group. The people they are poets, the so called poets. They-- they still write poems according to ancient forms. So this is a big group, but yearly there-- there no poets there, just poetry lovers, ancient poetry, ancient forms, poems in ancient forms. And then-- and poets-- how do you say the mainstream poets who writes in a vernacular Chinese and then another group of poets is-- well, they-- some young poets I have to say. Some young poets and they started their careers maybe in early-- late 70's or early 80's or 90's by editing printing their own small magazines. Yearly, these kind of small magazines, the circulation of these kind of small magazines could be just several hundred copies. And they are not sold but the printers or the organizer-- oh no, the editors yearly just send-- just spread these magazines to friends. So-- and also we have a lots of officially published magazines. Different-- we have magazines from different provinces and the most famous one is called Poetry Magazine. I mean the official magazine. In 80's, it was very influential, the circulation of this magazine in 80's was 5-- [inaudible] that's 500,000 copies in 80's. But now, the circulation is about-- is 10,000. So it's-- it changes. It changes. And also poets are very active in the internet. The young poets are really active in the internet. And there are several famous-- I don't know, is that sites or something. >> Websites. >> Websites. And so poets just publish their poems there and they cursed each other. [ Laughter ] >> And lots of debates there and so this-- what else? I am teaching, I teach at the Center Academy of Fine Arts. And [inaudible] she's a scholar doing the researches on contemporary Chinese literature at [inaudible]-- what's that called? >> Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences. >> Social Sciences. I'm [inaudible] institute of Chinese literature in Beijing, yes. >> You both spend time in American universities. Did you feel like the American poetry scene felt entirely foreign to you? Or did you see parallels between the American poetry scene and the poetry scene in China? >> Actually, we-- the Chinese poets are very familiar with American poetry, modern and contemporary. So many big names for the Chinese poetry readers from poets like T. S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, to the poets-- well, of course now is also aged poets like John Ashbery and many younger poets. And so the [inaudible]-- we have some-- actually we have had some good anthologies of modern and contemporary American poets. And-- but there's a difference between the American poetry audience and Chinese poetry audience. Yearly, in China people go to readings are the young people. But here I found that poetry audience is-- comes from difference ages. It's very-- it seems that more active because in Beijing only universities they organize some readings. And for a period of time there were readings in some bars or in some-- in some-- but mostly on campus. >> Well, I-- I know I-- there are different kinds of poetry in Universities and different genre, different-- different way of-- of writing and performance. But in China, we-- we just begin to-- to do so. I know in-- in United States we have other-- you have slam poetry and spoken words artist. We don't have that kind of poetry in China. So-- >> Go ahead. >> Oh, I have a question to Ms. Zhou Zan because you have just mentioned that the women poet-- poets in China. Could you share some information with us like in the most recent 5 years? What are-- most-- the recent development with women poetry, the new trend or-- or you can let us-- share us some information like, which website I can look up to for more-- their works, so to learn their-- yeah. >> Nice. Thank you to con-- considering this-- the-- the women poet-- poetry in China. We have a-- website called Zhou Zan [inaudible], the Poem Life-- www.poemlife.com and we have the [inaudible] is a magazine registered by me. And it's-- like internet, we have a forum, we discuss our poems and publish women poet-- poems, women poets' works there. You can-- you can go there and also I know a website of [inaudible]. They also have a [inaudible] website intended for women poets. >> Has much changed in the last 20 years that the anthology covers for women poets in China? >> Yes. I-- I think we have the very-- many good poets, women poets in China and they are younger and also they keep-- keep on writing from young to older ages. So, keep-- keep-- keep writing and change of styles. So-- yeah. >> Anybody, anybody else? So like-- oh, if you could just pass the mic right over there. Thank you. >> First, thank you so, so much for coming. There's-- it's just pure joy and-- and to-- to read poems is so wonderful but to here a poet read his own poems, it's beyond. It's just so wonderful. So, thank you so much. My question was, I was curious about your process when you're writing. If you personally find that you self edit or censor yourself as you're-- as you're writing or do you-- is there a need to do that in any regard? I mean, or-- or do you feel completely free to express whatever you-- you know, desire. [ Inaudible Remarks ] >> So, you mean censorship, right? Okay. [ Laughter ] >> I've been asked many times about this-- this question. Censorship, yes it's true but actually-- but in China actually we don't have a law to follow. >> So-- so when-- when a writer write actually I don't know what to follow whether I can write it or not. So I just write. I don't care about anything. But if it's an issue for-- for the-- for the editors, I think-- well, yearly they-- it's up to them, to the editors. So-- but editors are different. Editors from the north, editors from the south that's-- they are different. Publishing houses all-- are also different from Beijing, from Huangshi province, from [inaudible] province. So-- so China is-- I think in this sense, well, I don't know how to describe that. We have different publishing houses and different editors. Maybe our book is not regarded as a good one for this editor of this publishing house then maybe you can go to another publishing house in another province. So-- so actually, it's up to the editors. Then if an editor for-- for instance in Beijing, he feels that he's worrying about this book, he's not sure whether it will make a mistake or not. Maybe if he's-- maybe-- well, the-- yearly the young-- the young editors, if he's in young, if he's happened to be a young editor, he just-- he just make some decisions by himself-- he or she. But if it's an aged editor, she-- he or she may-- may hand it in to someone else. And if he or she does this, someone-- somewhere might say, "No, you can't publish this book." And-- but before things are changing for I think, 5 or 6 years ago. At that time if someone felt that this is-- this is not a good book, then they will have some critics to criticize this book. But later they found that it always cause sensations. If you criticize a book, then people will just crowded to the bookstore to find that book. >> Great advertising. [ Laughter ] >> And now, things are changing. If they are not pleased with the book, then they just keep silent. So-- so the book will be there in the bookstore and nobody go to buy that book. And so, things are changing. And maybe it's hard for the second print for that book. And-- and, so-- but actually, just now actually we got an interview and I mentioned that-- that for the Chinese, I think in the west, I don't find many people discussing about this. That is self censorship because-- because, for instance, I myself I grew up from the-- during the Cultural Revolution and I-- I was educated by that. Once an American photographer went to Beijing-- suddenly he found that I speak some chi-- some English and he stopped his work and asked me, "Please tell me something about cultural revolution." And I said, as you're an outsider of the Chinese society, but for me actually, I grew up in this atmosphere. So all these things I took them as my breath. I just breathe that. So-- so maybe, for instance the-- well, a kind of-- I'm used to. I-- for a period of time actually, I'm used to a certain kind of political atmosphere. And even, I think it's-- it's not only my case. Most of the people. Even they want to forget about that. Still, subconsciously or unconsciously they have their self censorships. And I feel that even some people who claim themselves to be absolutely away from the old ways of thinking. The old way of thinking is still there. So it's-- it's-- it makes the-- it-- it makes the society goes like this. I-- yeah, I don't know whether you agree with me or not. >> Can I just ask a question-- >> Yes. >> -- of both of you. So given-- given a recognition of self censorship, how does that affect your-- your own revision process as you're writing? Do you call in a question how you're changing things-- >> Not-- >> That you're doing it out of self censorship, or if you're doing it out of-- >> Not really political things. For instance, if I want to raise something evil. [ Laughter ] >> Whichever does all the time and, you know. >> What? >> I said whichever one does all the time. >> Then I-- sometimes maybe I hesitate. So in-- with-- where is the depth. And so-- so, how dark can I express in-- in which way can I-- can I show to the other people. So-- so I feel that yearly we say that we have-- everybody has a [inaudible], privacies and now in China, people also feel that a need of privacies. But I think not only privacies for your lives but also for your way of thinking. If you express something in this very strange way and-- and that will be-- I don't know. But for a-- for a writer, I think, for a poet, the most important thing is-- is to make-- to-- to write a poem so that the-- or to make a piece of artwork. And I try my best to breakthrough of all the things but I'm not sure whether I have-- actually I have another poem that is, I hide My Tale, like a pigtail or something. I do have a tail and I-- so I-- I have a line here. I didn't read that poem. >> Go ahead. >> I hide my tail. Oh, where-- where is that. So, I-- I don't want to regard myself as a-- as a person with-- I don't know. I-- I have so many-- I know I can fully understand the-- the Doctor Faustus, the-- the book by Goethe [phonetic] the German poet. So I-- I wrote-- I wrote a line that is, I bury my tail taking my place amongst everyone else bearing their tails. So I think this is the true condition for a poet. I don't want to brag myself as a-- as a hero or something but this is the true condition for a-- for a poet and then artist and-- and-- but I try to be honest to my-- to my-- difficulties. >> Yes. To me censorship-- well, I know this topic mentioned [inaudible] atmosphere in China or some country or other countries. But I think to a poet, we [inaudible] of course has-- have left kind of self censorship not only for political situation but also more situation and create-- create situation-- so for myself-- my creative, my situation. As I think I can change a way of thinking-- this kind of censorship. Also, I want to challenge this kind of censorship but I-- I shouldn't challenge it with a very simple way just like many, many people maybe in China or the United States just use this kind of censorship to get their fame, use the medi-- media like that. But I think to me, other poet, I must mix-- mix all kinds of censorship. Mix it together and create a very complicated poet and poems. Well, as a reader, maybe, I can read a censorship for you-- political way or more [inaudible]. I don't know, but to me it's-- I wanna mix-- mix, mix all kinds of different scenes. >> Well, I'm afraid we've run out of time but please do pick up a copy of the anthology and have our poets sign them. They're out in the back. Thanks so much for coming and if you wanna hear about more events here at the library, there's a sign up sheet in the back too. Thanks to our poets for a [inaudible]. [ Applause ] [ Inaudible Remark ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.