Chapter Three: The Structure of Modern Poetry (Part 2)

II. What Serves as the Thread: Developing Coherence

What is meant by a “thread” is not merely the order of narration, but an internal principle established by the poet amid abundant associative material—one that organizes meaning, guides reading, and constrains the flow of imagery. Its function is to help the poet select, discard, and arrange the materials that emerge from perception, memory, and imagination, transforming scattered sensations into a poetic structure with layers and a sense of direction.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, a thread has at least three functions:
First, to focus the theme—preventing imagery from drifting and losing focus;
Second, to construct rhythm—allowing the progression of sections to generate expectation and response;
Third, to guide emotional movement—enabling the reader’s psychological experience to shift along with the text.

If a poem lacks a clear thread, or if multiple threads conflict with one another, the material easily becomes a mere accumulation of images rather than the generation of meaning: the sections loosen, emotional momentum falters, and readers find it difficult to establish stable coordinates of understanding during the reading process.

Common forms of threads in modern poetry, in addition to time, space, and narrative perspective, also include the transformation of objects, emotional gradation, linguistic actions (such as writing, remembering, waiting), and even grammar or rhetorical figures themselves. However, in introductory study and typical examples, chronological order and reverse order remain the most readily observable and pedagogically effective types of threads.

(1) Chronological and Reverse Order: Time as the Thread

Poem Example 1: “Kunling” / Ya Xian — Narrative Progression through a Chronological Thread

“Kunling” / Ya Xian

At sixteen her name had already drifted through the city,
a desolate rhythm.
Those almond-colored arms should have been guarded by officials;
her small hair—oh—made Qing-dynasty men heartsick.
Was it Yutangchun?
“Faces cracking sunflower seeds in the garden night after night!”
“Bitter…”
Her hands placed in the cangue,
someone said
she once lived with a White Russian officer in Jiamusi.
A desolate rhythm.
Every woman cursed her in every city.

“Kunling” adopts chronological order as its core thread, unfolding—almost like a narrative poem—the tragic course of a female performer’s life. The poem opens by immediately marking a crucial temporal point: “sixteen.” This number is not merely a biological age but the moment at which her fate begins to be devoured by society.

The images follow the forward movement of time, scene by scene:
— entering the city, being watched and consumed;
— the interweaving of male infatuation and female resentment;
— rumors, cohabitation, and a cursed reputation;
— finally freezing on the image of punishment and restraint.

The rhetorical effect of this chronological thread lies in its simulation of an “irreversible destiny.” As the poem advances line by line, readers gradually realize that the tragedy is not a single event, but the result of layers of social structure, gendered gaze, and historical circumstance. Time here is not merely a backdrop; it is a force that pushes the character forward, allowing no return.

Thus, the emotional impact of “Kunling” arises from the high degree of isomorphism between the chronological thread and the theme of fate: as time moves forward, life deteriorates accordingly.

Poem Example 2: “An Afternoon Painting Lotuses” / Xi Murong — Emotional Suspense through a Reverse Thread

“An Afternoon Painting Lotuses” / Xi Murong

My life could have had
different encounters, if
before the rain-fresh lotuses
you had only walked past quietly.

My life could have had—

On that July afternoon, if
if you had not turned back.

In contrast to the chronological narration of “Kunling,” “An Afternoon Painting Lotuses” deliberately employs a reverse thread, postponing the “cause” until the end of the poem. From the very beginning, the poet uses a repeated hypothetical structure—“My life could have had”—to reveal a regret whose outcome is already fixed, yet the crucial turning point remains unstated.

Only in the final two lines is it disclosed:
“If you had not turned back.”

From the standpoint of rhetorical aesthetics, this is a suspense effect created by reverse temporal arrangement. The poet allows the reader first to feel the weight of the result, and only then guides them back toward the cause, so that the reading psychology proceeds from “feeling” to “understanding.” Such an arrangement makes the poem not merely a narration of missed love, but a simulation of how memory operates—we often become aware of loss first, and only afterward repeatedly ask: at exactly which moment did things go wrong?

If the poem were restored to chronological order, the logic of imagery would indeed become more straightforward, but this would also sacrifice the most important aesthetic effect of the original. The final two lines, which should originally have appeared at the beginning, are deliberately placed at the end by this sensitive poet, who first recounts the outcome and the process, leaving the cause for last—clearly to create an atmosphere of suspense and to arouse the reader’s curiosity to probe the “reason.”

The author restores the poem to its original chronological order as follows:

If on that July afternoon
if you had not turned back,
if before the rain-fresh lotuses
you had only walked past quietly,
my life could have had
different encounters.

The logic of image development becomes smoother, yet the suspenseful atmosphere seems diminished, and the poem feels less “romantically emotional.” What is lost is that romantic melancholy of “if only I had known earlier,” forever accompanied by belatedness. Therefore, reverse order here is not a display of technique, but a rhetorical choice precisely calibrated to serve the emotional theme.

Summary: Aesthetic Differences between Chronological and Reverse Threads

• Chronological thread
→ Emphasizes experience, accumulation, and a sense of irreversible fate
→ Suited to social, historical, and tragic themes

• Reverse thread
→ Emphasizes retrospection, suspense, and psychological disparity
→ Suited to lyrical, memorial, romantic, and regretful themes

There is no hierarchy between the two. The key lies in this question:
👉 Does the thread resonate with the poem’s emotional core and the reader’s psychological process?

A mature modern poem is never a matter of “writing whatever comes to mind,” but of clearly knowing:
how I want the reader, step by step, to enter my emotions and my thoughts.

(2) Using Spatial Orientation or Shifts in Place as the Thread

In modern poetry, changes in space or setting are often employed as a guiding thread to arrange and organize scattered images and emotional materials, giving the poem’s narrative or lyrical logic a clearer sense of direction. The function of a spatial thread is not merely to provide variation in scenery or concrete description; more importantly, through the transition of scenes, it guides the reader’s psychological and emotional movement, allowing emotional experience to unfold in synchrony with visual perception.

According to rhetorical aesthetics, the characteristics of a spatial thread include:

1. Situational mapping: each location or spatial orientation carries a specific psychological or emotional image;
2. Rhythmic regulation: scene shifts correspond with the rhythm of poetic lines, creating a sense of breathing in the act of reading;
3. Expansion of imagery: movement from one space to another enables the gradual unfolding of layered imagery and symbolic associations;
4. Emotional accumulation: the progression of scenes allows emotions to build up or transform, producing a gradual movement from subtle observation to deeper feeling.

In short, a spatial thread serves as a pathway that leads the reader from “seeing,” to “feeling,” and finally to “understanding.” If scene transitions in a poem are vague or lack a clear thread, the imagery—however rich—can easily become scattered, making it difficult for readers to establish emotional resonance or psychological immersion.

Poem Analysis: “Let the Wind Recite” / Yang Mu

“Let the Wind Recite” / Yang Mu

1

If I could write for you
a poem of summer, when reeds
multiply violently, sunlight
flies up to the waist and
streams horizontally
between parted feet. When a new drum
bursts open—if I could

write for you a poem of autumn,
rocking on a small boat,
soaking twelve notches of time,
when sorrow coils on the riverbed
like a yellow dragon, letting mountain torrents
rise and spray, flying upward
from wounded eyes—if I could

write for you a poem of winter,
as if at last to bear witness
for ice and snow,
for the shrunken lake;
to bear witness that someone visits at midnight,
waking a hastily made bed of dreams,
taking you to faraway provinces,
giving you a lantern, asking you
to sit there quietly and wait,
and forbidding you to weep.

Yang Mu’s “Let the Wind Recite” is a classic example of the use of a spatial thread. As the poem moves through the seasons, the scene in each section shifts accordingly:

1. Summer reeds
2. • Scene: reeds growing wildly, sunlight flying up to the waist, water flowing horizontally at one’s feet
   • Function: dynamic natural imagery mirrors intense and expansive emotion, establishing the poem’s psychological tone.
3. Autumn boat
4. • Scene: a small boat rocking on the river, sorrow coiling on the riverbed, rushing mountain torrents
   • Function: the imagery of water and boat conveys movement, bearing, and unease, symbolizing emotional drifting and sedimentation.
5. Winter’s shrunken lake
6. • Scene: ice and snow covering the land, a midnight visit, distant provinces
   • Function: ice and snow symbolize calmness and testimony; distant provinces and the lantern suggest waiting and vigil. Emotion shifts from expansiveness to quietude, completing its closure.

Rhetorical and Aesthetic Highlights

• Scene transitions aligned with seasons: from summer → autumn → winter, providing not only a sense of physical space but also a layered progression of psychological rhythm.
• Synchronization of imagery and emotion: each spatial image carries a specific emotional charge—reeds signify intensity, the river surface signifies drifting, and the frozen lake signifies stillness.
• Interweaving of emotional time and space: spatial shifts are both geographical or natural changes and a psychological journey from expansiveness to沉澱 and finally to waiting.
• Resonance of vision and the senses: the spatial thread allows the reader’s visual, auditory, and tactile senses to move in step with the poem’s emotions, creating an immersive reading experience.

Conclusion

“Let the Wind Recite” skillfully employs space as its primary thread, linking seasons, scenes, actions, and emotions into a multilayered structure that moves from external landscape to inner feeling. By using spatial transformation as the engine of emotional progression, Yang Mu enables readers not only to “see” the scene, but also to “feel” the emotion, exemplifying the paradigmatic flow in modern poetic rhetorical aesthetics:
thread → imagery → emotion → theme.

As the poem advances through the seasons, each section’s scene shifts accordingly—from summer reeds, to an autumn boat on the river, to a shrunken lake amid ice and snow—sequentially unfolding the poet’s emotional trajectory.

(3) Using the Characteristics of a Specific Object as the Thread

In modern poetry, many object-centered poems adopt the characteristics of a particular object as their primary thread. The essence of this type of thread lies in the fact that the object’s inherent properties—its form, habits, behavioral patterns, and rhythms of change—can naturally run through the entire poem, becoming the central framework that links imagery, emotion, and psychology.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, such a thread serves the following functions:

1. Unity of imagery: with the object’s characteristics as the core, all descriptions, metaphors, and extensions of imagery in the poem revolve around it, creating a strong sense of coherence.
2. Emotional mapping: qualities such as strength or weakness, resilience, expansion, or fluidity can mirror human psychology and emotion, concretizing abstract feelings.
3. Rhythm and tension: the object’s inherent rhythm of change naturally drives the rhythm of the poetic lines, producing a sense of breathing and emotional fluctuation.
4. Symbolic extension: the attributes of the object can be extended into symbolic meanings, making the poem’s philosophical, emotional, or narrative layers more multidimensional.

Thus, when a poet selects a specific object as the guiding thread, that object is not merely an external image in the text, but becomes a carrier of emotion, psychology, and symbolism all at once. Without such a thread, poetic imagery easily becomes scattered, emotions difficult to concentrate, and the sense of layering weakened.

Poem Analysis: “Tumor” / Xiang Ming

“Tumor” / Xiang Ming

You are hidden within the body,
the kind of tumor
one longs to remove at all costs—
an incurable disease
of many years’ standing.

Unless reduced to ashes,
you are not merely allergic to pollen.
Between summer and autumn,
when a cicada convulses in molting,
you convulse too.
And you are stubborn as a callus in the palm:
strip away one layer,
another is already pregnant.

I draw in the essence of heaven and earth;
you draw it from me.
Lightning rests in my mouth;
you give forth thunder.
Fire hides in my chest;
you ignite it into a lamp.

In the end, all you want
is to thin me
into a single sheet of paper—
something on that paper
over which the passing sun and moon
vie to sweep,
weeping in astonishment:
this—this is poetry.

“Tumor” is an object-centered poem that portrays the tenacity of a tumor within the body and how it torments human flesh: “to thin me into a single sheet of paper.” The poem vividly captures the tumor’s nature; it is intriguing to read, yet one can also sense the poet’s helplessness toward it. Ultimately, this is a tumor both detested and cherished—a “poetic tumor.”

Xiang Ming’s “Tumor” takes an internal tumor as its guiding thread, its characteristics running throughout the poem to form the core structure:

1. The object’s characteristics as a chain of imagery
2. • The tumor’s stubbornness, layered growth, and impossibility of eradication →
     “you are stubborn as a callus in the palm / strip away one layer / another is already pregnant.”
   • The tumor’s erosion of the body →
     “in the end, all you want / is to thin me into a single sheet of paper.”
3. Emotional projection and psychological mapping
4. • The tumor’s persistence and侵蚀 are personified as acts of torment inflicted upon the poet, allowing the reader to feel terror, helplessness, and inescapable anxiety.
   • “Lightning rests in my mouth / you give forth thunder / fire hides in my chest / you ignite it into a lamp” aligns the tumor’s vitality with the body’s energy, creating tension and a sense of interaction.
5. Rhetorical and aesthetic highlights
6. • Personification and hyperbole: the tumor is endowed with growth, reproduction, and combustion, aligning emotional force with object imagery and concentrating poetic tension.
   • Layered imagery: extending from the body and the senses to spirit and time, the tumor’s characteristics link all imagery into a coherent psychological and emotional trajectory.
   • Symbolic extension: the tumor symbolizes unavoidable obstacles in life, as well as the inevitable pain and anxiety of creation; the concluding line—“this is poetry”—transforms bodily torment into artistic tension.

Summary

“Tumor” uses the characteristics of a tumor as its guiding thread, linking imagery and emotion while transforming personal bodily experience into deeper psychological and artistic symbolism. The tumor is both torment and catalyst for creation; its persistence and intrusion allow the poem to achieve a high degree of integration in imagery unity, emotional concentration, and rhythmic tension, presenting an aesthetic of the “poetic tumor” that is both loved and loathed.

(4) Using the Occurrence or Development of an Event as the Thread

In modern poetry, using an event as the guiding thread is particularly common in epic or socially engaged poetry. The defining feature of this approach is that the cause, process, development, or outcome of an event serves as the axis running through the entire poem, concentrating dispersed imagery and emotions within a single temporal line or narrative framework. This enables readers to grasp the poem’s emotional rhythm and intellectual depth by following the event’s progression.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, the functions of an event-based thread are mainly as follows:

1. Plot-oriented linkage of imagery: the event itself provides a framework of time, space, and action, allowing imagery to connect naturally along the course of the event rather than remaining fragmentary.
2. Emotional accumulation and the formation of tension: as the event unfolds, emotional rhythm gradually accumulates, moving from calm to anxiety, and then to climax or沉澱, generating psychological and emotional flow.
3. Carrying social or historical significance: events can embody historical memory, social hardship, or reflections on human nature, enriching the poem’s symbolic and philosophical dimensions.
4. Interweaving of multiple perspectives: event-based threads often allow shifts between first-person, third-person, or collective perspectives, adding narrative depth and psychological resonance.

In short, the event thread tightly weaves together time, space, characters, and psychology into a clear textual structure, enabling readers to immerse themselves—while following the course of events—in emotional, social, and historical consciousness.

Poem Analysis: “The Last Wang Muqi” / Chen Li

“The Last Wang Muqi” / Chen Li

Seventy days now—
we have held fast in the profound darkness,
listening to the dialogue between coal seams and water.
The recurring stillness, eternal as a tape recording,
plays back our breathing in meticulous detail.
Roses on our lips, maggots on our shoulders;
an occasional intruding firefly makes me think of
the morning star from when we set out.
The Keelung River winding endlessly,
the maple trees of Sijiaoting cold as frost…
…

This poem takes several major coal-mine disasters in Taiwan during the 1980s as its simulated setting. Using a first-person plural “we,” it depicts miners trapped deep underground and their struggle for survival under extreme hardship, profoundly moving in its effect.

Chen Li’s “The Last Wang Muqi” uses the occurrence and development of an event as its primary thread. Adopting the first-person collective perspective of “we,” it portrays a group of miners trapped in a coal mine, with all imagery and emotion revolving around the unfolding event:

1. Construction of the event thread
2. • Seventy days of entrapment → “Seventy days now / we have held fast in the profound darkness.”
   • Interaction between strata, coal, and water → “listening to the dialogue between coal seams and water / the recurring stillness, eternal as a tape recording.”
   • Natural elements that appear incidentally within the event—fireflies, the morning star, the Keelung River, maple trees—as triggers of memory and psychological response.
3. Imagery and emotional mapping
4. • Darkness, silence, and maggots symbolize the cruelty of confinement and the threat of death.
   • Roses and the morning star symbolize life, memory, and fleeting hope.
   • The progression of the event drives emotional rhythm, shifting from solitude and anxiety to yearning for even the smallest glimmer of light.
5. Rhetorical and aesthetic highlights
6. • Juxtaposition of event and imagery: the event provides narrative structure, while imagery carries psychological and emotional weight, forming a triadic structure of event–imagery–emotion.
   • Historical and social consciousness: set against the backdrop of Taiwan’s coal-mine disasters of the 1980s, the poem serves both as personal testimony and as social record and reflection.
   • Use of the collective perspective: the first-person “we” creates a shared experience, intensifying the event’s tension and emotional resonance.

Conclusion

“The Last Wang Muqi” takes an event as its guiding thread, tightly integrating dispersed imagery, psychological portrayal, and historical context. The development of the event not only drives the poem’s emotional tension, but also generates profound reflection on human nature, life, and social adversity. Through the event-based thread, Chen Li successfully fuses individual experience, collective ordeal, and historical memory, achieving a unified aesthetic of epic scope, immersion, and intellectual force.

(5) Using a Character’s Personality, Thought, Emotion, or Life Experience—and Their Development—as the Thread

In modern poetry, many narrative or monologic character poems take the development of a character’s psychology and personality as their guiding thread. The core idea of this approach is that a character’s inner traits, modes of thought, emotional fluctuations, or life experiences can themselves connect the poem’s imagery, rhythm, and emotional structure.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, a character-based thread serves the following functions:

1. Psychological threading: changes in a character’s personality and thinking become the poem’s psychological line, allowing readers to follow the inner rhythm smoothly and experience emotional shifts.
2. Imagery mapping: the character’s emotions and psychological states are transformed into concrete images, visualizing abstract inner feelings—often through natural phenomena, objects, or everyday scenes that embody psychological tension.
3. Narrative coherence: the character’s life experiences interact with events, spaces, or objects, giving the poem a coherent narrative or psychological progression.
4. Emotional resonance: as readers follow the development of the character’s thoughts and feelings, they synchronize with the poem’s psychological rhythm, generating immersion and emotional identification.

In short, a character-based thread tightly integrates psychology, action, and imagery, achieving a high level of unity among narrative, emotion, and image. It is especially well suited to portraying psychologically complex characters with distinctive perspectives.

Poem Analysis: “The Madwoman” / Ya Xian

“The Madwoman” / Ya Xian

If you laugh at me again I’ll lift the whole street
and hoist it toward that starry sky
the police can’t control, the whistles can’t reach,
where household registers are in chaos.
Laugh—laugh—laugh again, laugh again,
and Maria will knot the rainbow and hang you with it.
Before the furious statue of Moses, I sit,
all Africa’s torrents hidden in my hair.
I sit. Let the hot wind blow me,
let the city’s noise polish my naked breasts round.
I sit. Maria comes to claim me.
I go with her. I am a proper woman.
…

This poem adopts a first-person monologic voice, vividly enacting a mentally unstable woman whose inverted perception of reality—seen through her eyes and mind—creates a reading experience that is comic yet tearful, making it a thought-provoking character poem.

Ya Xian’s “The Madwoman” is a quintessential character poem that takes psychological development as its central thread. Its artistic power can be observed in the following aspects:

1. Construction of the character thread
2. • The poem uses a first-person “I” monologue to fully present the inner world of a mentally disturbed woman.
   • Personality traits: wildness, rebellion, and an imagination tinged with violence →
     “If you laugh at me again I’ll lift the whole street / and hoist it toward that sky the police can’t control.”
   • Psychological development: from anger and provocation to self-affirmation →
     “I sit. Maria comes to claim me. / I go with her. I am a proper woman.”
3. Imagery and psychological mapping
4. • The starry sky, rainbow, statue of Moses, African torrents, hot wind, and city noise all project the character’s inner chaos, tension, and imagined world—absurd yet profound.
   • Imagery and psychology echo one another, creating unified tension on both visual and mental levels.
5. Rhetorical and aesthetic highlights
6. • Monologue and psychological projection: the psychological thread is the poem’s core; actions and images all arise from the inner state.
   • Hyperbole and imaginative excess: absurd expressions such as “knot the rainbow and hang you with it” externalize extreme emotions, heightening drama and absurdity.
   • Rhythm and repetition: repeated phrases like “I sit” and “laugh, laugh again” reinforce psychological rhythm and emotional tension.

Summary

“The Madwoman” uses the development of character, thought, and emotion as its main thread, naturally linking imagery, rhythm, and feeling. Absurdity, wildness, anger, and vulnerability coexist, allowing readers to experience both the character’s inverted perception and a bittersweet resonance beneath the absurdity. Ya Xian skillfully employs a triple structure—psychological thread → imagery projection → emotional resonance—making this poem a paradigm of psychologically driven character poetry with strong rhetorical tension.

(6) Using Conflicts and Contradictions of One’s Own or Mutual Thoughts and Emotions as the Thread

In modern poetry, many monologic, epistolary, or lyric poems adopt internal or interpersonal psychological conflict as their guiding thread. The core idea of this approach is that a poem’s emotional tension, imagery arrangement, and narrative movement are all connected through inner contradictions and conflicts.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, thought- or emotion-based conflict threads have the following characteristics:

1. Bidirectional psychological projection: through “I” and “you,” or through different facets of the self, poets present emotional or ideological tug-of-war, making conflict the poem’s backbone.
2. Rhythmicization of emotion: contradiction naturally drives linguistic rhythm—sentence length, repetition, pauses—creating emotional fluctuation and tension.
3. Mutual reflection of imagery and emotion: conflicting psychological states are transformed into symbols such as water, fire, autumn rain, or moonlight, concretizing abstract feelings.
4. Multi-perspective narration: the same event or situation may be presented from different roles or mental states, enriching emotional layers.

This type of thread is particularly effective for expressing romantic contradictions, longing amid loss, psychological struggle, or heightened emotional tension, pushing a poem’s inner feeling to its limits.

Poem Analysis

“The Dialectics of Love” (One Title, Two Versions) / Luo Fu

Wei Sheng met a woman beneath a bridge. She did not come; the water rose, yet he would not leave. Embracing a pillar, he died.
— Zhuangzi, “Robber Zhi”

Version I: I wait for you in the water

I wait for you in the water.
The water rises to my knees,
to my waist,
inch by inch flooding my throat.
Two eyes floating on the river’s surface
still shine,
fixed on a green stone path.
My ears strain to hear the rustle
of your skirt brushing thistles.
Day after day,
month after month,
thousands of times rising and falling
within my swollen body.
Moss grows thick on the stone pillar,
oysters encrust my arms.
My hair coils in the rapids like a nest of water snakes.
Clutching the bridge pier,
I wait for you in a thousand fathoms below.
When water comes, I wait in the water for you;
when fire comes,
I wait in the ashes for you.

Version II: I wait for you beneath the bridge

I wait for you beneath the bridge.
The wind rages, rain striking fast like footsteps crossing the bridge—
are those your hurried steps to keep our appointment?
Holding that umbrella
we once shared through misty twilight,
it fills a pocket
with clouds and the jingling sound
of little copper coins.
I wait for you beneath the bridge,
for you to run toward me through the rain.
The river surges,
to my feet, my waist, soon flooding my startled mouth.
The whirlpool slowly expands into the face of the dead.
I begin to feel fear at the water’s edge.
So cold, lonely, and hollow,
like a fish after spawning.
Certain now that you will not come,
so-called “may we be paired birds in heaven,”
I pluck a white feather in silence
and walk up to the shore.
It is not that I am heartless—
only that the water arrived faster than you.
A bouquet of roses is swept away by the waves;
one day it will drift into your hands.

This poem adopts an epistolary mode, with the speaker “I” and the addressee “you,” but presents two contrasting perspectives: Version I embodies unwavering, death-defying devotion, while Version II represents pragmatic withdrawal. Readers are invited to reflect on how the same scene can lead to radically different endings depending on who experiences it.

1. Construction of the conflict thread
2. • The poem’s core conflict lies between love and waiting, obsession and adaptability:
   • • Version I: extreme devotion unto death →
       “When water comes, I wait in the water for you; / when fire comes, I wait in the ashes for you.”
     • Version II: rational judgment and letting go →
       “I pluck a white feather in silence / and walk up to the shore.”
   • The same setting, different psychological choices—creating a powerful contrast that foregrounds love’s contradictions.
3. Imagery and psychological mapping
4. • Water, fire, river, waves, whirlpools symbolize emotional unpredictability, pressure, and fear.
   • Rising water and roses swept away by waves signify helplessness and loss in love and life.
5. Rhetorical and artistic highlights
6. • Parallel contrast: two outcomes and mental attitudes are set side by side, intensifying ideological tension.
   • Hyperbole and extremity: images such as “a thousand fathoms” and “in the ashes” magnify devotion and solitude.
   • Emotional rhythm: varying line lengths, enjambment, and repetition evoke wave-like emotional surges.

Summary

Luo Fu uses ideological and emotional conflict as the guiding thread, placing unwavering devotion and pragmatic reason within the same scene. Love thus becomes not a single-track romance but a dialectical existence rich in psychological tension and philosophical depth.

“Letter of Divorce” / Chen Qufei

Last autumn you left without a word.
The osmanthus in the courtyard almost fell out with me,
no longer gathering around to hear my storytelling.
This autumn, even the underage swallows on the beam
have packed up and moved their household registration.
The autumn insects fill the garden with dark circles under their eyes,
resenting how my midnight flute sounds too desolate,
overly moved, always draining their spirits.
Thinking now, your farewell words must have held deeper meaning:
all your life you wanted nothing from me—
plain tea and simple meals were freedom enough.
You told me not to dwell on poetic fame.
Yet how could I ever wish
to haggle over imagery, polish diction,
or weigh tones and rhymes between the lines?
Just as you saw me as a soulmate and entrusted yourself to me,
I never complained about the sameness of our daily dishes.

Tonight, a cool evening breeze pierces the lattice paper window.
From Zhuangzi’s Autumn Floods I bring back a cough and a cold.
Snuffing out the kerosene lamp, about to loosen my clothes and sleep,
I hear faintly echoing music in the courtyard.
Pushing the door open—it is only a sudden autumn rain.
Alas! A sentimental poet is rarely blessed with muddled clarity.
I recall the new lyrics and tunes I wrote for you this past year;
singing alone, some ending notes I stretch and stretch,
yet can never quite reach.
I recall how you loved to play and sing that Wei City Song
when I was drunk.
Tonight, autumn rain dampens the light dust;
the phoenix tree outside the window tosses me
its one remaining leaf,
asking me to write, through the night,
a letter of divorce in advance
to this damp, pest-ridden autumn—
adding that when the first snow falls,
it will follow my example and live
a simple life.

This poem, written in epistolary form, portrays a disheveled scholar abandoned by his wife. On an autumn night, he recalls their life together, full of grievances and melancholy. Why would a woman willing to endure plain tea and simple meals leave him? The poem does not state the cause explicitly, but readers can infer that repeated conflicts and disillusionment drove her away.

1. Construction of the conflict thread
2. • The poem’s core conflict lies between attachment and departure, longing and resignation:
   • • The man remains emotionally attached →
       “Thinking now, your farewell words must have held deeper meaning.”
     • The woman chooses to leave →
       “Plain tea and simple meals were freedom enough.”
   • The contradiction arises from differing values and attitudes toward life.
3. Imagery and psychological mapping
4. • Osmanthus, autumn insects, autumn rain, paper windows, first snow correspond to solitude and desolation, tracing the man’s inner flow.
   • The kerosene lamp and music symbolize memory and the warmth of past life, intensifying psychological tension.
5. Rhetorical and artistic highlights
6. • Juxtaposition of detail and psychology: everyday scenes closely intertwine with inner feeling, producing emotional resonance.
   • Rhythmic control: long sentences convey memory, short lines express complaint or sighs, mimicking mental fluctuation.
   • Implicit conflict: causes are unstated, but contradictions emerge organically through detail and psychological portrayal, inviting reader inference.

Summary

Chen Qufei uses emotional conflict as the guiding thread, weaving love, loss, and separation into a continuous psychological movement. Readers are immersed in the solitude, helplessness, and subtle longing of an autumn night, where conflict and emotion intertwine to create a mature style of psychologically nuanced poetry.

Both poems exemplify the use of ideological or emotional conflict as a guiding thread:

• Luo Fu emphasizes the contrast between extreme devotion and rational release, producing a grand, philosophical conflict.
• Chen Qufei foregrounds emotional entanglement within everyday detail and undercurrents of psychology, offering a more delicate and humanized form of conflict.

(7) Narrative Threads Interwoven Through a Primary Line and Secondary Sub-Line

In modern poetry, the interweaving of a primary narrative line with one or more secondary lines is a commonly employed structural strategy:

• Primary line: The axial thread of the poem, carrying the core narrative or progression of events. It usually follows a continuous trajectory of time or action.
• Secondary line: A supplementary strand that provides emotional depth, psychological reflection, or philosophical resonance, enriching and complicating the primary narrative.

From the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, this narrative configuration exhibits the following characteristics:

1. Multilayered Plot Development
   The secondary line—often consisting of psychological depiction, emotional flow, social observation, or philosophical reflection—interacts with the primary line to increase narrative tension and structural complexity.
2. Emotional Resonance
   Through lyrical introspection or reflective passages in the secondary line, readers are able to perceive the characters’ emotional fluctuations and psychological depth beyond the surface progression of events.
3. Intertextual Imagery
   Scenes or objects introduced in the primary narrative frequently reappear, transform, or echo within the secondary line, thereby acquiring symbolic or metaphorical significance.
4. Rhythm and Tension
   While the primary line propels the narrative tempo, the secondary line modulates emotional intensity through pauses, repetition, or asides, creating an oscillation between storytelling and emotional immersion.

This narrative strategy is particularly effective in narrative poems, epic poetry, or socially engaged verse, as it allows for the simultaneous presentation of external events and internal psychological processes.

Poem Analysis

“Journey” / Zheng Chouyu

In “Journey,” the reader encounters one of humanity’s most devastating realities: famine brought about by war, forcing countless civilians into displacement. During their flight, the protagonist and his pregnant wife seek shelter in the homes of friends. Later, as they follow the railway out of the disaster zone, the pregnant wife tragically dies. This sequence constitutes the poem’s primary narrative line.

The secondary line emerges after this catastrophic loss. Confronted with irreparable grief, the protagonist feels life has lost all meaning and utters a desolate lament:

“After the great famine, there will still be war—
I might as well return to being a mercenary…”

This lament embodies an impulse toward self-exile, born from despair, and reflects what may be termed the “orphan archetype”—a consciousness fractured by abandonment and repeated loss.

Such tragic narratives bear witness to eras of turmoil, leaving readers with a profound sense of helplessness. Through the portrayal of a destitute man in a chaotic age, the poem conveys personal suffering while simultaneously articulating an anti-war compassion and a deeply humanistic ethos. It possesses universal moral significance and a palpable social function of ethical purification. Within Zheng Chouyu’s predominantly lyrical oeuvre, this poem stands out as rare, yet exceptionally powerful and profound.

1. Primary Narrative Line

• The primary line traces war and displacement: the protagonist and his pregnant wife drifting from shelter to shelter during famine, eventually fleeing along the railway.
• The pivotal event—the wife’s death—forms the emotional climax of the narrative.
• Temporal and spatial progression structures the poem: from friends’ homes → railway → wilderness, creating a coherent narrative arc.

2. Secondary Psychological Line

• The secondary line articulates the protagonist’s inner reflection and emotional rupture:
  “After the great famine there will still be war / I might as well return to being a mercenary.”
• Personal tragedy expands into a meditation on society and history, forming intertwined psychological and philosophical strands.
• The speaker’s despair reveals a self-exiling consciousness rooted in repeated loss and existential disintegration.

3. Rhetorical and Aesthetic Highlights

• Metaphor and Symbolism:
  The sunset likened to “the kiss of a pregnant wife,” and Chinese toon buds “briefly beloved,” transform ordinary images into emotional symbols.
• Interweaving of External and Internal Landscapes:
  Scenes of flight resonate with inward lamentation, aligning event and emotion.
• Rhythmic Control:
  Long lines depict the arduous journey, while short lines register moments of reflection, producing a rhythmic interplay between narration and introspection.

4. Overall Effect

• The interweaving of primary and secondary lines presents both human tragedy and psychological response amid war.
• The poem transcends individual suffering to reflect social desolation and historical brutality, affirming its anti-war stance and humanitarian spirit.
• This structural design grants the poem narrative clarity and emotional depth, making it a rare exemplar of modern poetry that successfully integrates lyricism with narrative force.

Summary

Zheng Chouyu’s “Journey” exemplifies the interweaving of a primary narrative line and a secondary psychological-philosophical line:

• Primary line: External events — war, displacement, and the wife’s death
• Secondary line: Internal reflection — lament, the orphan archetype, and self-exile
• Through mutual illumination, the two lines achieve a high degree of unity in narrative tension, emotional density, and intellectual depth.

In modern poetry, this interlaced structure—anchored by a dominant narrative line and supported by secondary strands—is a foundational strategy in narrative verse.

(8) Narrative Threads Interwoven Through Overt and Covert Lines

In modern poetic composition, the interweaving of overt (explicit) lines and covert (implicit) lines constitutes a refined narrative strategy:

• Overt line: The visible surface narrative or imagery—events, actions, or scenes directly accessible to the reader.
• Covert line: The underlying emotional, philosophical, symbolic, or metaphorical meanings embedded beneath the overt line, granting the poem semantic multiplicity and interpretive depth.

From a rhetorical-aesthetic perspective, this approach demonstrates the following features:

1. Dual Layers of Meaning
   The overt line offers a readable story or image, while the covert line conveys emotional, intellectual, or moral significance, generating textual tension and depth.
2. Metaphorical Encoding
   Objects or events in the overt line are frequently imbued with symbolic functions associated with the covert line, expanding interpretive possibilities.
3. Emotional–Imagistic Complementarity
   The covert line often emerges through the extension, transformation, or symbolic elevation of overt imagery, intensifying emotional impact.
4. Rhythm and Tension
   The narrative pace of the overt line contrasts with the latent emotional unfolding of the covert line, gradually guiding readers toward deeper meaning.

This strategy is commonly found in allegorical poems, metaphor-driven verse, or philosophically oriented lyric poetry, enabling works to balance readability with conceptual depth.

Poem Analysis

“A Love Poem of Tea” / Chang Tso

We must hide,
glancing at and entwining each other in water.
Only after the time it takes to brew one cup of tea
do we decide to become a single color.

On the surface, the poem depicts tea leaves and a teapot interacting through water, releasing color to form tea. Beneath this overt imagery lies a covert emotional narrative: the relationship between a woman and a man. The woman is symbolized by the tea leaves; the man, by the teapot that contains her. Through a period of verbal and physical intimacy (“the time it takes to brew one cup of tea”), affection emerges under the gentle catalysis of water-like tenderness, culminating in emotional fusion (“deciding to become a single color”).

1. Overt Line

• The surface imagery presents the interaction between tea leaves and teapot:
  “We must hide / glancing at and entwining each other in water.”
  “Only after the time it takes to brew one cup of tea / do we decide to become a single color.”
• The poem describes the process of infusion and containment, presenting concrete actions and visual scenes.
• The overt line follows a simple temporal and kinetic sequence: immersion → interaction → chromatic fusion.

2. Covert Line

• The covert narrative encodes romantic intimacy: tea leaves symbolize the woman, the teapot symbolizes the man.
• Through time and mutual adjustment (“one cup of tea’s time”), emotional harmony and love emerge.
• The symbolic transformation elevates tea-making into a metaphor for love—gentle, immersive, and integrative.

3. Rhetorical Highlights

• Personification: Tea leaves and teapot are endowed with human emotions and consciousness.
• Symbolic Metaphor: Physical actions in the overt line correspond directly to emotional processes in the covert line.
• Temporal Rhythm: The brief duration of “one cup of tea’s time” suggests slow emotional gestation.
• Economy of Language: With only a few lines, the poem achieves layered meaning and emotional resonance.

4. Overall Effect

• Through the interweaving of overt and covert lines, the poem attains both readability and contemplative depth.
• Readers first perceive the tea imagery, then gradually uncover the emotional metaphor of romantic union.
• This structure renders the poem rich, suggestive, and enduring, exemplifying the rhetorical power of metaphor and symbolism in modern poetry.

Summary

“A Love Poem of Tea” interlaces:

• Overt line: The actions of tea leaves, teapot, and water
• Covert line: Romantic interaction and emotional fusion

Through this dual structure, the poem simultaneously presents visible action and concealed emotion, embodying a paradigmatic example of allegorical lyric poetry and demonstrating the artistic efficacy of overt–covert narrative interplay in modern poetic rhetoric.