Chapter 6: The Musicality of Modern Poetry (Part II)
—Abstract—
Modern poetry, as an emerging literary form, is no longer constrained by formal restrictions and is currently developing toward prose poetry and unrhymed poetry.
After emerging from the shadow of metrical poetry, can modern poetry discover a musicality that keeps pace with the new age and open up new horizons? This is a question worthy of deep reflection.
For modern poetry, which is unrestricted by form, how should we perceive and simultaneously experience its musicality? The author attempts to re-examine the musicality of modern poetry from the perspective of Western music theory, providing a more complete explanation of rhyme, melody, and rhythm, while also clarifying the relationships among the three.
—Keywords—
Free verse, melody, rhythm, syllable
Section One: The Constituent Elements of Musicality
1. The Poet’s Sense of Sound
Every poet differs in sensitivity to language. What is meant by sensitivity refers to the degree of acceptance, comprehension, and application of both the meaning and the sonic feel of language, varying in depth and level.
If a poet understands musical principles well and possesses a considerable degree of musical cultivation (that is, a substantial understanding of music theory), it will naturally assist in the selection of words and phrases, enabling the arrangement of appropriate melody and rhythm.
From the perspective of music theory, “melody” refers to syllables formed by notes rising and falling in wave-like patterns within a particular gamut or range of one’s voice, a banding tone created by variations in pitch and duration. “Rhythm,” on the other hand, refers to the speed (fast or slow), weight (strong or weak), and the rise and fall, pauses and stresses of a melody. In other words, melody is the “substance” of a banded musical tone, while rhythm is its “actual mode of performance.”
Regarding the Northern Song lyricist Zhou Meicheng (Zhou Bangyan), the History of Song states:
“Bangyan loved music, could compose his own tunes, and created long-and-short lyric verses for musical performance. His diction was pure and elegant and was passed down through the ages.”
Furthermore, the General Catalogue of the Siku Quanshu, Summary of Fang Qianli’s Harmonizations of Qingzhen Ci states:
“Bangyan possessed an exquisite understanding of tonal regulations and stood foremost among lyricists. In his compositions, not only must the level and oblique tones be observed, but even among oblique tones, the rising, departing, and entering tones could not be confused.”
Therefore, Zhou Meicheng’s poetry is characterized by the stylistic features of “rigorous musical structure and elegant diction.”
2. Musicality in Modern Poetry
In the field of music, percussion instruments such as drums, cymbals, gongs, and chime instruments, together with plucked instruments such as the bass guitar, function primarily as instruments that establish rhythm. Other brass and woodwind instruments are chiefly responsible for performing the main melody and accompaniment, thereby forming melody. Rhythm and melody complement each other and together form a complete musical composition (harmony).
The musicality of modern poetry, of course, depends upon each poet’s sensitivity to sound, but a concrete examination must still return to the text itself.
If we define modern poetry as “an emerging form of free verse,” then the musicality of a free-verse text is jointly constituted by melody and rhythm (cadence).
Melody further includes two dimensions: rhyme (including assonance and end rhyme) and intonation.
Upon further analysis, “intonation (melody)” should refer to “the tonal contour formed by the rise and fall of pitch and the duration of sounds within a line of text.” End rhyme refers to “the regularity of the pronunciation of line-final words across lines,” with periodic repetition being a necessary condition.
Poetry critic Huang Yongwu stated:
“What is called rhyme is the repeated appearance of words sharing the same rhyme at the ends of lines, thereby creating harmony. Yet the function of rhyme is not merely to facilitate singing or create pleasant sounds. The musical function of rhyme can also support and fully reveal the poetic atmosphere.”¹
Rhythm, meanwhile, refers to “the speed, strength, rise and fall, and pauses of linguistic syllables (tone-feet).”
Each written character simultaneously contains both a phonetic signifier and a semantic signifier. Chinese characters are monosyllabic, and their phonetic component consists of an initial consonant and a final vowel.
Western languages are generally composed of multisyllabic words. Each word consists of consonants, vowels, and syllables. When a word contains two or more vowels, it forms a multisyllabic word.
Phonetic elements combine to form syllables, and syllables simultaneously create both melodic variations in pitch and duration, as well as rhythmic variations in speed and strength.
Generally speaking, the number of syllables depends on the length of the poetic line. Long lines are often composed of several syllables; the greater the number of syllables, the more relaxed the corresponding rhythm tends to be. Short lines are the opposite, producing a faster and more urgent rhythm.
When identical finals or vowels recur at the beginnings or ends of lines, rhyme is created. The repeated appearance of these finals or vowels, viewed across multiple lines, forms what is called “rhyme,” or “assonance.”
For the convenience of readers, the author illustrates it as follows:
The Musicality of Poetry: Rhyme, Harmony, and Rhythm
|
Musical Element |
Subcategory |
Description |
|
Melody |
Rhyme |
Line-ending finals |
|
Assonance |
Periodic repetition of vowels | |
|
Melody (Intonation) |
Rise and fall of syllables and duration of sounds | |
|
Harmony |
Harmony |
Regular fluctuations of intonation |
|
Rhythm |
Syllables (tone-feet) |
Variations in speed, strength, and duration during continuation |
Domestic scholar of children’s poetry Professor Chen Zhengzhi states:
“The three major elements of music are melody, rhythm, and harmony. Melody refers to a combination of musical tones differing in pitch, duration, and intensity; rhythm refers to variations in speed and strength; harmony refers to the simultaneous vertical combination of several musical tones.” (Studies in Children’s Poetry Writing, Chapter 4 “The Language of Children’s Poetry,” Section 3 “The Language of Music”)
His method of classification differs somewhat from that of the present author.
3. Musicality in Classical Chinese Poetry
In Chinese classical poetry, regarding the compositional form of regulated verse and quatrains, seven-character lines generally consist of four syllabic units, while five-character lines consist of three syllabic units. These are also called tone-feet or rhythmic pauses.
Poet Liu Dabai argued in A Detailed Explanation of the External Metrical Forms of Chinese Poetry:
“Five-character poetry has three syllabic units, and seven-character poetry has four syllabic units. The proportions of five to three and seven to four are relatively close to the Golden Section in formal aesthetics.”²
For example, Li Shangyin’s line:
“Heaven’s will pities the secluded grass; among men the late clear weather is treasured.”
follows a “two-one-two” pattern.
Meanwhile, He Zhizhang’s line:
“Young I left home, old I return; my hometown accent unchanged, though my temples have faded.”
follows a “two-two-two-one” pattern.
The verbs within such poetic lines are often short, rapid monosyllables and are frequently where rhythmic variation occurs.
Regarding the musicality of Chinese classical poetry, Li Yuanluo believes that it is primarily constituted by several aspects, including “rhyme continuity (rhyme selection and rhyme change),” “coordination of level and oblique tones,” “alliteration and repeated rhymes,” and “repetitive chanting,” all of which contribute to musical beauty.³
The Book of Songs, Yuefu Poetry, Tang Poetry, and Song Lyrics were all intended to be sung with musical accompaniment and performed with instruments. Variations between level and oblique tones in poetic lines create tonal rises and falls, while repeated rhymes create harmonious sounds between stanzas.
Qing dynasty scholar Shen Deqian stated in Remarks on Poetry:
“The usefulness of poetry lies in sound, and its subtlety lies in the interplay of rise and fall, elevation and descent. When readers calmly follow the rhythm and chant attentively, they perceive the marvelous qualities that earlier poets could scarcely express in words and that are transmitted beyond mere sound.”
The alternation between level and oblique tones is precisely the source of tonal variation in poetry.
The development of Song lyrics and Yuan songs, with their hundreds and thousands of tune patterns and song patterns, reminds us that metrical structures can become detached from the poetic text itself and exist independently as a complete domain.
Yet it cannot be denied that these tune patterns and song patterns, existing independently of poetic texts, are already musical works rather than purely literary verse.
Each lyric pattern or Yuan song permits a wide variety of subjects and emotional expressions, provided that the requirements regarding character count, line count, tonal patterns, and rhymes are observed.
As a result, the creation of verse is placed in a passive and accommodating position and can only be called “filling in lyrics.”
However, we should not forget that the principal purpose of Song lyrics and Yuan songs was musical performance.
Just like modern songs, their melodies and rhythms are standardized and exist prior to the poetic text. The verse must accommodate the song’s melody and rhythm, as well as formal requirements such as character count, line count, tonal patterns, and rhyme schemes.
For trained lyricists, familiarity with the melodies and rhythms of tune patterns and song patterns allows them to understand clearly the rise and fall, duration, tempo, and intensity of every segment within a particular musical mode.
They can therefore select vocabulary appropriately to satisfy formal requirements while simultaneously expressing emotions through the verse they compose, thereby closely integrating poetry and music.
This type of verse inherently possesses the advantage of self-contained metrical structure and is therefore better able to express the dual beauty of poetry and music: the beauty of imagery and the beauty of musicality.
There exists an inseparable relationship between literary form and musicality.
The regulated verse and quatrains of classical poetry, constrained by formal requirements such as line count, tonal patterns, rhyme, and parallelism, undoubtedly achieved great refinement and a vivid sense of musical beauty. Yet such formal constraints also functioned like externally imposed shackles.
By the High Tang period, when regulated verse and quatrains had reached an unprecedented peak, these formal constraints had become rigid.
The emergence of lyric poetry during the Late Tang and Five Dynasties periods represented a limited adjustment and relaxation of this rigidity.
The statement “form determines content,” with its binary opposition and dialectical implications, may be somewhat crude and inadequate when applied to classical poetry and lyrics.
However, if one says instead that “form determines the musicality of metrical poetry and lyrics,” then from the perspective of the practice of “filling in lyrics,” this is a statement of fact.
Certainly, the external form of metrical poetry significantly constrains the poet’s method of composition, but it cannot thereby determine the content of the poetic work itself.
Four: The Musicality of English and American Metrical Poetry
Modern European and American free verse in the modern period was first liberated in terms of musicality from the English sonnet (sonnet form) and the French alexandrine (alexandrin).
French phonologist Grammant analyzed French free verse and pointed out three major characteristics:
【1】The most common Alexandrine line in French poetry consists of twelve syllables. In the classical school it is divided into four pauses, in the Romantic school into three pauses, and in free verse it may range from three to six pauses.
【2】French poetry usually uses a rhyming pattern of aabb. Free verse may mix abab crossed rhyme and abba enclosed rhyme patterns.
【3】In free verse, each line is not restricted by the conventional Alexandrine form; within a stanza, line lengths may vary.
English free verse, based on a wavy cadence, is even freer in form. Line lengths are not fixed, and the number of lines in each stanza is also unrestricted.
However, in English free verse, one can still observe rhythmic rises and falls of intonation and repeated echoing of rhyme between lines and stanzas. Although it is not as regular and clear as metrical forms such as the sonnet, such musical features still exist.
The author compares Shakespeare’s sonnet and W. Wordsworth’s lyric poetry as follows:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
The sonnet, also called the sonnet form, is typically written in iambic pentameter, meaning each line contains five feet (also called tone units).
This poem is divided into three sections, using a “4–4–6” structural division.
The first section (lines 1–4) uses the vowel “e” as rhyme; the second section (lines 5–8) uses “ai” as rhyme; the third section (lines 7–12) uses an abab crossed rhyme pattern, employing the vowels “ei” and “o” as rhyme elements; the final two lines end with the long vowel “i:”.
Although there is a rhyme shift between the first and second sections, each section itself uses a single vowel as rhyme. The third section uses alternating rhyme, creating interwoven variation in sound and enriching the poem’s rhythm.
Daffodils (W. Wordsworth)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle in the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” is divided into four stanzas, each consisting of six lines, and still belongs to metrical poetry.
The rhyme scheme of each stanza follows a regular pattern, and the syllables are also controlled.
In terms of rhyme, each stanza adopts an ababcc end-rhyme structure.
Each line contains between two and four syllabic units.
This poem has not yet entered the stage of free verse (vers libre), that is, completely open and unrestricted form. Metrical structure remains the main creative principle of Wordsworth’s Romantic poetry.
Five: Musicality in Chinese Free Verse
Since the May Fourth Movement in China promoted vernacular poetry, the rise and decline among metrical poetry, prose poetry, and unrhymed poetry has been quite evident, gradually moving toward prose poetry and unrhymed poetry.
Due to formal and metrical constraints, the refined structure and musical beauty formed over thousands of years in classical Chinese poetry have been gradually dissolved by free verse written with greater freedom of expression.
The territory of prose has expanded, while the domain of modern poetry has gradually receded.
From vernacular poetry to modern poetry and even postmodern poetry, we must begin to reflect upon and reassess the aesthetic standards of “poetry” that have existed for thousands of years, in order to respond to the inevitable “displacement phenomenon” in the evolution of literary form.
Musicality was once regarded as the “certificate of identity” of poetry.
Influenced by English and European free verse, Chinese free verse broke away from constraints such as line count, tonal patterns, parallelism, and rhyme rules.
In this process of displacement, how poetry can still maintain a clear distance from prose is a serious issue modern poets must consider.
Poetry theorist Zhu Mengshi (Guangqian) said:
“The function of prose leans toward narration and reasoning, while the function of poetry leans toward lyric expression and emotional release.”
“Matters of reason can be understood purely through semantic meaning, but emotion must be experienced through the sound of language.”³
If we hold onto these two premises, it may help us develop a new aesthetic standard for musical beauty in modern poetry, one that reflects modern emotional sensibilities.
When an author chooses either poetry or prose to express thought and emotion, this is largely determined by literary fashion. We can only follow such trends rather than reverse them.
However, we cannot simply say that “the gradual disappearance of the boundary between poetry and prose is an inevitable trend of literary evolution.”
If we still insist that poetry, as a genre, holds an irreplaceable position, and believe that poetry possesses aesthetic qualities that prose cannot achieve—namely refinement, suggestiveness, and musical beauty—then we should actively attempt, through creative practice, to establish a new aesthetic horizon for musicality in modern poetry.
Section Two: The Developmental Trajectory of Musicality in Modern Taiwanese Poetry
1. Historical Origins of Modern Taiwanese Poetry
During the Republic of China period, free verse in mainland China was influenced by European and American poetry and initiated a sweeping formal liberation beginning with the May Fourth Movement.
From early experimental short poems and vernacular poetry to the developmental stage of the late 1930s—where metrical poetry (including neo-sonnet styles), symbolism, and romanticism flourished simultaneously—free verse eventually took shape.
After the National Government retreated to Taiwan, the tradition of Chinese free verse was carried over.
Mainland Chinese poets in exile and Taiwanese modernist poets combined forces, and with theoretical support from local poets such as Lin Heng-tai and Yeh Wei-lien, modern poetry in Taiwan entered a new phase.
However, the direct lineage of Taiwanese free verse also came from Japanese modernist literature.
The “Windmill Poetry Society,” established in Taiwan in 1935, was influenced both by Japanese modernist poetry and indirectly through Japanese translations of European and American literary movements such as Symbolism and Surrealism.
Since early free verse in both mainland China and Taiwan was influenced respectively by Western and Japanese modernism, and both were grounded in modernist literary thought, their convergence in Taiwan further deepened modern poetry.
This modern poetry inherited from free verse retained its core spirit from Western free verse:
formal liberation, and the broad acceptance of creative methods derived from Symbolism, Imagism, and Surrealism.
II. Clarification of Musicality in Free Verse
The musicality of free verse includes three dimensions: rhythm, cadence, and harmony. Rhythm is further divided into two parts: rhyme and tone. Poetics scholars throughout history, from Zhu Guangqian to Tan Ziháo and those after them, have tended to regard rhythm simply as rhyme (end rhyme) or homophony, and have grouped the rise and fall of melody (pitch contour) and the length of notes under rhythm, conflating them with the speed, strength, and rhythmic rise and fall of syllables. 5 The author, having immersed himself in Western music for several decades, believes that it is necessary to clarify the musicality of linguistic syllables based on music theory and semiotics, because the similarity between language and musical notes lies mainly in the fact that both are “symbols representing sound.” Language is a symbolic system with a triadic unity of “form, sound, and meaning,” which is also evidence that “painting, music, and poetry” share the same origin, and further proof that poetry and music are more closely related in lineage than poetry and painting. After the development of free verse, rhyme (end rhyme), which once governed metrical structure, was gradually abandoned, and melody and rhythm thus became the main components of musicality in free verse.
Regarding “rhythm,” poets and theorists throughout history have proposed different classification standards. For example, Zhu Mengshi proposed:
[1] physical rhythm, physiological rhythm, psychological rhythm
[2] natural (internal) rhythm and formal rhythm
[3] linguistic rhythm and musical rhythm 6
[4] pauses of sound and pauses of meaning
Guo Moruo proposed: “movement rhythm” and “sound rhythm” 7
Bian Zhilin proposed: “humming-type rhythm” (chanting tone) and “speaking-type rhythm” (recitative tone) 8
Local scholar Professor Chen Zhengzhi divided it into: internal musicality (internal rhythm) and external musicality (external rhythm) 9
The author will selectively adopt these classifications in the following discussion. In order to help readers understand the relationships among different scholarly classifications, the author organizes them as follows:
Physical rhythm: natural rhythm
Rhythm: Musical rhythm (acoustic rhythm)
Physiological rhythm
Internal rhythm
Movement rhythm
Speaking-type rhythm (recitative tone)
Psychological rhythm
Humming-type rhythm (chanting tone)
The musicality in free verse depends on the external form of the poetic text. At the moment the text is completed in writing, its musicality is also endowed. The melody within the musicality of the poetic text (the rise and fall of pitch and intensity) is, unless “notation symbols” are used to mark each syllable’s strength and pitch step by step, fundamentally variable and unstable. In other words, it is placed in the hands of the reader and changes from person to person at any time, because each reader’s sensitivity and mode of expression differ. As for rhythm, it is constrained by the formal structure of the poetic text, such as stanza arrangement, line count, number of words per line, line breaks, and enjambment. In other words, the speed, strength, and rhythmic rise and fall of poetic lines largely derive from the formal design established by the poet.
III. Musicality in Modern Taiwanese Poetry
Free verse, liberated from formal constraints, entered the modern poetry period in Taiwan and clearly gained a broader space for expression than before. Poets from the “Blue Star” and “Genesis” poetry societies, as well as later poets from the “Bamboo Hat” society, engaged in avant-garde linguistic and formal experimentation, producing a wide variety of poetic styles:
(1) Surreal linguistic and formal experiments
For example, Luo Fu’s “Death of the Stone Chamber” and Luo Men’s “Fort McKinley” exhibit surreal linguistic and formal experimentation. Works such as Lin Heng-tai’s “Landscape,” Guan Guan’s “Lotus” and “Water Ginger Flower,” and Ya Xian’s “Adagio in a Violent Style” employ rhetorical design aesthetics such as repetition, parallelism, gradation, anadiplosis, inversion, deviation, and palindrome. Zhan Bing and Fei Ma conducted visual poetry experiments, while Bai Qiu’s “Wild Geese” and “The Wanderer” explored visual aesthetics.
(2) Symbolic prose poetry: Shang Qin’s “Giraffe,” Chen Qianwu’s “Deer,” and Su Shaolian’s “Beast” represent prose-poetry experiments rich in symbolic implication.
(3) Local realist Taiwanese-language poetry: Taiwanese-language poems by Lin Zongyuan, Zheng Jiongming, Xiang Yang, and Li Changqing, as well as Taiwanese song-poems by Lu Hanxiu.
Altogether, these works present a colorful and diverse record, to a considerable extent combining the mutually communicable qualities of poetry, music, and visual imagery, expanding the territory of modern poetry and broadening poets’ horizons. Among them, aside from visual and image poetry experiments that emphasize textual imagery, most are closely related to the musicality of poetry. In addition to these poets who boldly sought breakthroughs, there are also other poetic works of different styles.
(4) Romantic lyric poetry: Yang Mu’s “By the Water’s Edge” and “When the Wind Rises,” Zheng Chouyu’s “Skylight,” “Error,” “Mistress,” Zhang Cuo’s “Sonnet of Error” and “Double Jade Bracelet Lament,” Luo Zhicheng’s “A Candle Falls Asleep in Its Own Flame,” and other lyric poems with Eastern or Western romantic characteristics.
(5) A fusion of neoclassical mood and ballad style: Yu Guangzhong’s “Fire Bath” and “Four Variations of Nostalgia.”
(6) Realist poetry with social realism and humanitarian concern: such as Ya Xian’s “Mad Woman,” “Opera Actress,” and “Khrushchev,” Li Kuixian’s “Bottle Orchid,” “Resident Bird,” Zheng Jiongming’s “Beggar” and “Sweet Potato,” Li Minyong’s “Prisoner of War,” “Landscape,” “Dark Room,” Xiang Yang’s “Position” and “Outside Chiayi Street,” and other political and social realist poems characterized by irony and critique. In addition, Wu Sheng’s “Impression of My Hometown” and “I Do Not Talk With You,” Lin Zongyuan’s “People Say You Are a Sweet Potato” and “A Small Worm in a Cabbage Heart,” and other local poets’ warm and touching hometown poetry each establish their own musicality with personal style and tone.
Through the continuous efforts of postwar generations and second- and third-generation poets, Taiwanese modern poetry has developed into a rich orchestral symphony with a multi-voiced texture. Whether it is the adagio of romantic lyric poetry and neoclassical poetry, or the multi-tonal, recursive, and complex formal designs of modernist poetry, or the resounding, emotionally powerful political and social realist poetry, or even the dense resonance of gunfire and heartbeat within the heavy stone chamber in “Death of the Stone Chamber,” all bring a refreshing experience to readers. From the “Blue Star” movement in 1954, through the “Guantang Incident” in 1972–73, up to the publication of “Introduction to Modern Poetry” in 1979, a full twenty-six years—one quarter of a century—constituted a “lively period” of drums, gongs, suonas, saxophones, blues, and rock.
IV. Melody and Rhythm in Taiwanese Modern Poetry
To extract regular patterns of musicality from the diverse themes and styles of Taiwanese modern poetry is a difficult task. Modern poetry is free in form; melody and rhythm vary not only according to theme and style, but also from person to person. In terms of subject matter, lyrical poetry—whether monologue form, epistolary form (letter form), narrative form, or dialogue form—generally has elegant melody, gentle rhythm, and expresses a romantic style, most belonging to chanting (humming) rhythm.
In addition, there are also some poems with song-like qualities and relatively regular structures. Some of these have been set to music by composers and have become widely circulated “folk songs,” such as Yu Guangzhong’s “Four Variations of Nostalgia,” Xi Murong’s “Song of the Frontier,” “Ever-Blue Sky,” and Chen Kehua’s “The Sky of Taipei” and “Butterfly Garment.”
Political poetry and social poetry have intense melodies, dramatic fluctuations, and sonorous rhythms, expressing a realist style, and mostly belong to speaking (recitative) rhythm.
As for experimental poetry, surreal poetry, and prose poetry that adopt formal design approaches and avant-garde styles, they present multiple timbres, recursive structures, and unpredictable melodies, as well as rhythms comparable to those of a symphony orchestra with distinct characteristics.
- Sonorous political poetry and social realist poetry: the cadence interwoven with swords, guns, and blood and tears
If lyric poetry is, within the category of “lyrical poetry,” the best female protagonist full of sorrow and sentimentality, then political poetry and social realist poetry are undoubtedly, within the category of “realist poetry,” the best male protagonist filled with sword-like energy and scenes of blades, light, and blood. Political poetry and social poetry, based on a realist creative outlook, often possess the following characteristics:
(1) A macroscopic perspective: the field of discourse expands to local regions, society, and the nation. Themes are diverse, including political phenomena, social issues, folk customs, and even environmental issues, all of which are objects of poetic concern.
(2) A position of satire and critique: arising from dissatisfaction with the status quo and reflection on the past, such poetry often expresses irony, ridicule, condemnation, critique, or humanitarian concern for the disadvantaged, with a broad spirit of aiding the vulnerable.
(3) An aesthetic of exposing ugliness: realist works mostly use dark or “ugly” materials to reveal the dark side of human nature and social injustice. Through imagery processing, they present pathological and fragmented aesthetic experiences that ultimately soothe the reader.
(4) Distinct rhythmic rise and fall: although still using a speaking (recitative) rhythm, the lines are mainly composed of short and medium-length sentences, with rapid rhythm and strong tone, producing a forceful, sonorous effect when read aloud.
Among Taiwanese poets, the group that most clearly represents realism and objectivist observation is the “Bamboo Hat” poetry society, a collective of local poets. The works of “Bamboo Hat” poets often imply meanings indirectly, using objectivist intuition to express symbolic significance in a simple but profound manner; they also prefer dealing with dark and gray materials, using language to conduct a “silent indictment.”
The author selects works by poet Li Kuixian and Taiwanese-language poet Lin Zongyuan as sample texts for analyzing the musicality of social realist poetry and Taiwanese-language poetry:
“Resident Bird” / Li Kuixian
My friends are still in prison
not like migratory birds
pursuing seasons of freedom
seeking new lands of adaptation
rather willing
to feed back the weak homeland
My friends are still in prison
folding their wings into mute resident birds
abandoning language, also
abandoning memory of altitude, also
training to drift with the wind
rather willing
to ruminate the weakness of the homeland
My friends are still in prison
Poetry has been called a “silent firearm,” which demonstrates the influence and power of poetic works. Poetry reveals its theme through imagery, and the theme conveys the author’s perception, feeling, cognition, and consciousness, often deeply entering the reader’s mind and provoking reflection. This poem “Resident Bird” takes “political prisoners” as its theme. In legal studies, “political prisoners” are also called “prisoners of conscience,” distinguished from ordinary “criminal prisoners.” In modern nations, the presence of political prisoners is an important indicator of the degree of democratization of a country.
The poet adopts a first-person “monologue” narrative perspective, telling readers about a group of his friends who, due to “political errors,” are imprisoned in dark, sunless prisons. The poem describes these friends, the “political prisoners,” as intellectuals with moral integrity and stubborn spirit—men of blood and courage who would rather “cry out and die than remain silent and live.”
Here, “Resident Bird” is not only a theme but also a symbolic representation of characters. The poet of “Bamboo Hat,” Huan Fu (Chen Qianwu), once said: “If symbolism is removed from poetry, poetry ceases to exist.” Within limited lines, Li Kuixian repeatedly uses the same opening phrase in each stanza, clearly reminding readers of the serious political issue that “political prisoners” still exist. At the same time, in terms of musicality, through rhetorical formal design, this poem uses “stanzaic parallelism” to construct its structure, producing a song-like, recursive melody. The poem employs a “humming-type rhythm,” with each stanza beginning with the repeated line “My friends are still in prison,” and ending with the phrases “feed back the weak homeland” and “ruminate the weakness of the homeland.” Although the number of lines and words between stanzas varies slightly, the form is nevertheless relatively orderly. This formal strength gives the poem a higher musical status, allowing it to express a rhythm similar to that of metrical poetry—harmonious melody (homophony and harmony)—as well as an orderly “humming-type rhythm.” From the simple imagery of this poem, readers not only understand the reality of political prisoners as a social issue, but also perceive their spirit and inner voice; and the melody and rhythm of “metrical poetry” function like the soundtrack of a film, allowing readers to beat time and shed tears while humming between the lines.
- Clarification of Musicality in Free Verse
The musicality of free verse includes three dimensions: rhythm, meter, and harmony. Rhythm is further divided into rhyme and tone. Poetics scholars throughout history, from Zhu Guangqian to Qin Zihao and those after, have treated rhythm simply as rhyme (end rhyme) or assonance, and have confused the rise and fall of melody (pitch movement) and the length of notes with rhythm, conflating them with the speed, strength, and cadence of syllables5. The author, having immersed himself in Western music for several decades, believes that it is necessary to clarify the musicality of syllabic language based on music theory and semiotics, because the similarity between language and musical notes lies primarily in the fact that both are “symbols representing sound.” Written language is a symbolic system with a trinity of “form, sound, and meaning,” which is also evidence that “painting, music, and poetry” share the same origin in blood, and further proof that poetry and music are more closely related in origin than poetry and painting. As for free verse after its development, rhyme (end rhyme), which dominated metrical structure, has gradually been abandoned, and melody and rhythm have therefore become the main components of musicality in free verse.
Regarding “rhythm,” poets and theorists throughout history have proposed different classification standards. For example, Zhu Mengshi proposed:
【1】physical rhythm, physiological rhythm, psychological rhythm
【2】natural (inner) rhythm and formal rhythm
【3】linguistic rhythm and musical rhythm6
【4】pauses of sound and pauses of meaning
Guo Moruo proposed: “movement rhythm” and “sound rhythm”7
Bian Zhilin proposed: “humming-type rhythm” (chanting tone) and “speaking-type rhythm” (recitative tone)8, and local scholar Professor Chen Zhengzhi divided it into: internal musicality (internal rhythm) and external musicality (external rhythm)9;
The author will selectively use these in later discussion. In order to help readers understand the relationships among different classifications proposed by scholars, the author organizes them as follows:
Physical rhythm: natural rhythm
Rhythm: Musical rhythm (sound rhythm)
Physiological rhythm
Internal rhythm
Movement rhythm
Speaking-type rhythm (recitative tone)
Psychological rhythm
Humming-type rhythm (chanting tone)
The musicality in free verse depends on the external form of the poetic text. At the moment the text is completed, musicality is also endowed to it. In the musicality of poetic text, melody (the high and low intensity of tone), unless “notation symbols” are used to mark the strength and pitch of each syllable one by one, is in principle variable and unstable; in other words, it is controlled by the reader and varies from person to person, because each reader’s sensitivity and mode of expression differ. As for rhythm, it is constrained by the formal structure of the poetic text, such as stanzas, line count, number of words per line, line breaks, enjambment, etc. In other words, the speed, strength, and cadence of poetic lines largely come from the formal design established by the poet.
- Musicality in Modern Taiwanese Poetry
Free verse, liberated from formal constraints, entered the period of modern poetry in Taiwan and clearly opened up a broader space for expression. Poets from the “Blue Star” and “Genesis” poetry societies, as well as those from the later “Li” poetry society, engaged in avant-garde linguistic and formal experiments, producing a wide variety of poetic styles:
(1) Surrealist language and formal experiments
For example, Luo Fu’s “Death in the Stone Chamber,” and Luo Men’s “Fort McKinley” are surrealist linguistic and formal experiments; Lin Hengtai’s “Landscape,” Guan Guan’s “Lotus” and “Water Ginger Flower,” and Ya Xian’s “Adagio in the Form of Song” and other works employ rhetorical structural design aesthetics such as repetition, parallelism, gradation, anadiplosis, inversion, disruption, and palindrome; Zhan Bing and Fei Ma conducted visual poetry experiments, and Bai Qiu’s “Wild Goose” and “Wanderer” represent visual aesthetic experiments.
(2) Symbolic prose poetry: Shang Qin’s “Giraffe,” Chen Chien-wu’s “Wild Deer,” and Su Shaolian’s “Beast” represent prose poetry experiments.
(3) Vernacular realist Taiwanese-language poetry: Taiwanese-language poetry by Lin Zongyuan, Zheng Jiongming, Xiang Yang, Li Changqing, and Taiwanese-language song-poetry by Lu Hanxiu.
Taken together, these works present a colorful and diverse record, to a considerable extent combining the mutually translatable properties of poetry, music, and painting, expanding the territory of modern poetry and broadening poets’ horizons. Among these, except for the experiments in visual poetry and image poetry, which emphasize the textual visuality of poetry, the rest are all closely related to the musicality of poetry. In addition to these poets who actively sought breakthroughs, there are also other poetic works of different styles:
(4) Romantic lyric poetry: Yang Mu’s “By the Waterside,” “When the Wind Rises,” Zheng Chouyu’s “Skylight,” “Error,” “Mistress,” Zhang Cuo’s “Sonnet of Error,” “Twin Jade Rings’ Grievance,” and Luo Zhicheng’s “A Candle Falls Asleep in Its Own Flame,” etc., lyric poems with Eastern or Western Romantic characteristics.
(5) A fusion of neoclassical atmosphere and ballad style: Yu Guangzhong’s “Fire Bath,” “Four Variations on Nostalgia.”
(6) Realist poetry with social realism and humanistic concern: such as Ya Xian’s “Mad Woman,” “Kunling Actress,” “Khrushchev,” Li Kuei-hsien’s “Bottle Orchid,” “Resident Bird,” Zheng Jiongming’s “Beggar,” “Sweet Potato,” Li Minyong’s “Prisoner of War,” “Landscape,” “Dark Room,” Xiang Yang’s “Position,” “Outside Chiayi Street,” and other political and social realist poems skilled in irony and critique. Also Wu Sheng’s “Impressions of My Hometown,” “I Do Not Talk With You,” Lin Zongyuan’s “People Say You Are a Sweet Potato,” “A Worm in a Cabbage,” etc., rural poets with warm and intimate tones—all of these establish their own distinct musicality and personal style.
Through the successive efforts of postwar-generation poets and second- and third-generation poets, Taiwanese modern poetry has symphonized into a mixed chorus with orchestral richness and diverse timbres. Whether it is the slow movement of romantic lyric poetry and neoclassical poetry, or the multi-timbral, recursive and winding formal designs of modernist poetry, or the resounding clangor of political and social realist poetry that shakes the heart like drums and gongs, or even in the heavy resonance of guns and heartbeat inside the stone chamber in “Death in the Stone Chamber,” all of these refresh the reader’s senses. From the founding of “Blue Star” in 1954, through the “Guan-Tang Incident” in 1972–73, to the publication of “Introduction to Modern Poetry” in 1979, a total of twenty-six years—one quarter of a century—this was truly a “lively period” of “beating gongs and drums, suona, saxophone, blues and rock.”
- Melody and Rhythm in Taiwanese Modern Poetry
To extract regular patterns from the musicality of various themes and styles in Taiwanese modern poetry is an arduous task. Modern poetry is not bound by form; melody and rhythm differ not only according to theme and style, but also from person to person. In terms of subject matter, lyrical poetry—whether in monologue form, epistolary (letter) form, narrative aside form, or dialogue form—generally has elegant melody and gentle rhythm, expressing a romantic style, and most belong to chanting (humming) rhythm. In addition, there are also some poems with ballad-like qualities and relatively well-structured forms; some of them were set to music by composers and became widely circulated songs known as “folk songs,” such as Yu Guangzhong’s “Four Variations on Nostalgia,” Xi Murong’s “Song of the Frontier,” “Ever-Blue Sky,” and Chen Kehua’s “The Sky of Taipei,” “Butterfly Garment.”
Political poetry and social poetry have intense melodies, dramatic fluctuations, and sonorous rhythm, expressing a realist style, and most belong to speaking (recitative) rhythm.
As for experimental poetry, surrealist poetry, and prose poetry that begin from formal design, they present multiple timbres and winding, recursive, uncoalescing melodies, as well as rhythms with distinctive characteristics like an orchestra.
1. Sonorous political poetry and social realist poetry: the cadences of swords, guns, and blood and tears
If lyrical poetry is, within the “lyric poetry” category, the best leading actress filled with sorrow and feminine sentiment, then without doubt, political poetry and social realist poetry are, within the “realist poetry” category, the best leading actor filled with sword energy and scenes of blood and blades. Political poetry and social poetry, grounded in realist creative principles, often have the following characteristics:
(1) A macroscopic perspective: the field of discourse expands to homeland, society, and nation, with diverse subjects covering political phenomena, social problems, folk customs, and even environmental issues—all of which are the poet’s concern.
(2) An expressive stance of satire and critique: arising from dissatisfaction with the status quo and reflection on the past, they often express irony, mockery, condemnation, critique, and humanitarian concern for the disadvantaged, as well as a broad spirit of helping the vulnerable.
(3) An aesthetic of exposing ugliness and revealing injustice: realist works mostly use dark and ugly materials, aiming to expose the dark side of human nature and social injustice. Through imagistic processing, they present pathological and fragmented aesthetic experiences in order to console the human spirit.
(4) Distinct cadences: although also using spoken (recitative) rhythm, the lines are usually composed of short and medium-length sentences, with tight rhythm and strong tone, producing a righteous and sonorous effect when read aloud.
Among Taiwanese poets, the most prominent group using realist methods and objectivist observation to express realism is the “Li Poetry Society,” a group primarily composed of local poets. The works of Li poets often imply meanings indirectly, expressing symbolic significance through objective representation—simple in wording but profound in meaning; they also tend to use ugly and gray materials, producing a “silent indictment” through language.
The author takes poems by Li Kuei-hsien and the Taiwanese-language poet Lin Zongyuan as sample texts for interpreting the musicality of social realist poetry and Taiwanese-language poetry:
“Resident Bird” / Li Kuei-hsien
My friend is still in prison
does not learn from migratory birds
pursuing seasons of freedom
seeking new lands for adaptation
would rather
regurgitate weak homeland
My friend is still in prison
folding wings into a resident bird of aphasia
abandoning language, and also
abandoning memories of altitude, and also
training of being lifted by the wind
would rather
ruminate the weakness of homeland
My friend is still in prison
Poetry has once been called a “silent firearm,” showing the power of poetic influence. Poetry uses imagery to manifest themes, and themes convey the author’s perception and consciousness, often taking deep root in the reader’s mind and provoking reflection. This “Resident Bird” uses “political prisoner” as its theme. In legal discourse, “political prisoners” are also called “prisoners of conscience,” distinguished from ordinary “criminal prisoners.” In modern states, the existence of political prisoners is an important indicator of the degree of democratization of a country.
The poet adopts a first-person “monologue” narrative perspective, telling readers about a group of his friends who, due to “political error,” are imprisoned in dark, lightless prisons. The poem describes how these “political prisoner” friends possess the moral integrity and stubborn spirit of intellectuals, being men of blood and passion who would rather “die singing than live in silence.”
“Resident Bird” here is not only a theme, but also an implicitly intended “character symbol.” Li poets of the “Li Poetry Society,” Huan Fu (Chen Chien-wu), once said: “If symbolism is removed from poetry, poetry cannot exist.” Within limited lines, the poet Li Kuei-hsien repeats the same opening phrase in each stanza, clearly intended to remind readers of the serious issue that the phenomenon of “political prisoners” still exists. At the same time, in terms of musicality, through rhetorical structural design, this poem uses “stanzaic parallelism” to construct its sections, producing a song-like “recursive repetition” melody. The poem uses a “humming-type rhythm,” with each stanza beginning with the repeated line “My friend is still in prison,” and ending with phrases like “regurgitate weak homeland” and “ruminate the weakness of homeland.” Although there are slight differences in line and word count between stanzas, the structure is relatively balanced. This formal advantage gives the poem a better position in musicality, enabling it to express a “metrical poetry”-like coordinated melody (assonance and harmony), as well as an orderly “humming-type rhythm.” From the poem’s simple and unadorned imagery, readers not only understand the real-world issue of “political prisoners,” but also feel their character and voice; and the metrical-like melody and rhythm function like the soundtrack of a film theme song, allowing readers to hum along between the lines, beating time together and shedding tears together.
Wu Sheng’s “Sweet Potato Map” is formally well-structured in its first three stanzas, using a “parallelism” design—“using syntactically similar structures to successively present imagery of the same scope and same nature”10. Parallelism is an almost universal formal device in songs; it enables the use of the same melody and rhythm to perform “repeated singing” with lyrics of similar form and similar meaning. In poetic discourse, “parallelism” arises from “diversified unity” and “differentiation of universals”: in the former sense, parallelism refers to “the orderly and regular emergence of multiple images, whose order may be alternating or flowing” (Huang Qingxuan’s words). Multiple images form a “universal,” pointing toward a single source and unified under a shared thematic intention; in the latter sense, parallelism means that “this universal, following the flow of consciousness, differentiates into multiple images that appear successively in an orderly and regular manner” (Huang Qingxuan’s words). “The syntactic similarity of parallel sentences shows that the preceding and following sentences share the same principle; the non-avoidance of repeated words in parallel sentences shows that the preceding and following sentences share the same elements” (Huang Qingxuan’s words). This confirms Xu Zhimo’s “Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again,” Yu Guangzhong’s “Four Variations on Nostalgia,” and other metrical and ballad-like poems with folk-song characteristics, as well as the first three stanzas of Wu Sheng’s “Sweet Potato Map.” Readers can easily perceive that within the neatly structured form designed by parallelism, there already exists a performative song form: lyrics of similar form and similar meaning are repeatedly presented through the same melody and rhythm.
“Earth” / Wu Sheng
Every day, from sunrise to sunset
the mother who keeps intimate company with the earth speaks thus—
the drainage ditch is my bathhouse
the banana grove is my toilet
under the bamboo shade is my bed for midday sleep
A mother without weekends, without holidays
with a lifetime of sweat, diligently and industriously
irrigates dreams within the soil
on this field of my home
season after season, planting again and planting again
Every day, from sunrise to sunset
the mother who does not understand fatigue speaks thus—
the refreshing wind is the best electric fan
the rice field is the most beautiful scenery
the sound of water and birds is the most beautiful music
Not caring how the civilization of distant cities
ridicules her, the mother
on this field of my home
with a lifetime of sweat, irrigates her dream
This poem “Earth” was once selected into the national compiled junior high school textbook. Its plain realist technique nonetheless produces deep emotional impact. “Language mixing” seems to be an unavoidable choice for the author, and it also shows that the poet Wu Sheng, although educated in “Mandarin (Beiping speech),” never forgot his mother tongue. The bilingual existence of “Mandarin and Taiwanese” has almost become a shared linguistic mode among postwar educated generations.
This poem is performed in a first-person monologue form, and the first and third stanzas are structurally similar. The third to fifth lines of the first stanza—“the drainage ditch is my bathhouse / the banana grove is my toilet / under the bamboo shade is my bed for midday sleep”—use Taiwanese vernacular sayings within poetry, entirely in the tone of a rural farm woman; the language is simple and natural, forming a contrast with the Mandarin used by the author in the second stanza. The third stanza’s third to fifth lines—“the refreshing wind is the best electric fan / the rice field is the most beautiful scenery / the sound of water and birds is the most beautiful music”—adopt the same expressive method. Although this poem exhibits “language mixing,” it does not hinder the reader’s comprehension of its poetic atmosphere, because the author expresses it very naturally; the Taiwanese speech spoken from the mother’s role is acceptable, since the mother is a rural farm woman who has long lived in close relation with the land.
- Lyric Poetry with Romantic Rhythm: love poetry with gentle melody and romantic mood
In Taiwanese modern poetry, lyric poetry presents a wave-like rise and fall in melody, emphasizing emotional resonance between beginnings and endings as well as across stanzas. Among poets such as Zheng Chouyu, Yang Mu, Zhang Cuo, and Luo Zhicheng, their works are the most stylistically distinctive and musically refined. The author selects three examples for appreciation:
“By the Waterside” / Yang Mu
I have already been sitting here for four afternoons
no one has walked past here—do not even speak of footsteps
(in loneliness—)
bracken fern has grown from beneath my trousers up to my shoulders
without reason covering me
saying the murmuring water is an inescapable memory
I can only let it be written upon the clouds at rest
Southward twenty meters, a laughing dandelion
Wind-pollinated flowers scatter pollen onto my bamboo hat
what can my bamboo hat give you
what can the shadow of my reclining body give you
Let the water sound of four afternoons be compared to the footsteps of four afternoons
If they are all impatient young girls
endlessly arguing
—then no one may come, I only want to nap
ah! no one may come
The poet uses a first-person monologue performance mode. Through sitting in silence on a bridge for four afternoons and listening to the murmuring stream, he narrates what has happened over these four afternoons and his inner emotional responses, writing a poetic work with such flowing melody and moving emotional resonance.
This poem is mainly composed of long lines, combined with short lines to create rhythmic variation. Long lines contain more syllables, usually more than four syllables, producing a more flowing and gentle rhythm. In addition, the poet uses sentence-ending particles such as “le,” “a,” and “ba”; these soft particles themselves create an elongating auditory effect, making the endings of lines more resonant and rounded.
four afternoons’ ∣ water sound ∣ compared to ∣ four afternoons’ ∣ footsteps ba
if they ∣ are all ∣ impatient ∣ young girls
The first line has five syllabic units, the second has four. Such long lines in lyric poetry produce extended phrasing and relaxed rhythm; when appropriately combined with short lines, they create rhythmic variation.
This poem precisely uses the aforementioned “speaking-type rhythm” throughout the entire text, allowing readers to feel a natural intimacy similar to ordinary speech within its lines. “Wind-pollinated flowers scatter pollen onto my bamboo hat” describes action and belongs to “action rhythm”; as for “murmuring water sound,” it combines both action and sound effects, integrating “action rhythm” and “sound rhythm” simultaneously.
〈Parting as a Farewell〉 / Zheng Chou-yu
This time I leave you, it is wind, it is rain, it is night
You smiled a little smile, I waved a hand
A lonely road then stretches toward both ends
Thinking at this moment you have returned to your riverside home
Imagining you are combing your long hair or tidying your wet coat
And my return journey through wind and rain is still long
The mountains retreat very far, the flat wilds expand even wider
Ah! This world, it seems darkness has truly taken form……
————————————
The kite has gone, leaving a broken thread of error
The book is too thick, it should never have been opened at the title page
The beach is too long, one should never have walked out footprints
Clouds come from the valley of the peak, spring water drips from stone crevices
Everything has begun, but where is the ocean?
————————————
This time I have left you, and will no longer think of seeing you
Thinking at this moment you have quietly fallen asleep
Leaving all that is unfinished between us, leaving it to this world
This world, I still firmly step upon it
And it has already become your dream……
[Author’s note: this poem only excerpts the first and last two sections and a small middle section]
This is a typical love poem. The poet’s emotion is extremely deep, the sorrowful tone is contained within, mournful and tragic, and when read it is deeply moving, leaving an unforgettable impression. The poet uses a first-person “letter form” narrative method, tenderly pouring out inner feelings to a specific object, belonging to a “spoken rhythm” (recitative tone). I, having engaged in modern poetry creation for twenty years, have always believed that if a poet in his lifetime can write a few widely loved and widely transmitted poems, then his life is not in vain. The achievement of poet Zheng Chou-yu is obvious to all; his works such as , , , , , , and this are all widely circulated, earning him the reputation: “Where there are hoofbeats, there is Zheng Chou-yu.”
This , the first sentence of the first and last sections “this time I leave you” is repeated. This mode of expression produces a mutual echo effect between beginning and end. In Western free verse it is called “initial alliteration,” slightly different from “final rhyme.” From a rhetorical perspective, this sentence is called an “displaced repeated line.” likewise uses a more colloquial “spoken rhythm,” on one hand speaking tenderly to a specific object: the “you” in the poem, making a sincere confession; on the other hand narrating a love story to the reader, the story structure being quite complete. Through “imagined presentation,” it merges two different places at the same time, producing a “double exposure” image similar to cinematic editing techniques.
This poem has a relatively slow rhythm, and likewise frequently uses terminal auxiliary particles such as “le” and “de,” which have an elongating sound effect. Moreover, the poet connects short sentences and medium-long sentences within the same line, further lengthening the wavelength of rhythm, producing overlapping resonance effects, making the rhythm of the poem slow and gentle, and the feeling increasingly tragic and beautiful. Reading it is like listening to a male singer, a low, hoarse, deeply emotional and majestic bass voice, whose magnetic tone makes one linger repeatedly, pondering again and again.
〈Twin Willow Leaf Swords〉 / Zhang Cuo
In the winter of the Guihai year, I accidentally purchased a pair of willow-leaf ancient swords at a western “gun exhibition,” greatly delighted, almost ecstatic, unable to put them down; having drifted in a foreign land for many years, these swords and I, at first sight, felt as if old acquaintances meeting again, with the feeling of grasping hands and sighing to each other; although I am often a regular visitor of “gun exhibitions,” obtaining these swords is truly something to be encountered but not sought. On a cold rainy night, under a lonely lamp, stroking the swords, I thus obtained this poem.
Tonight, how should we trace each other’s origins?
Even if I have a thousand words to inquire,
you also have no single word in reply,
under the lonely lamp,
you silently present yourself naked,
with waves of blade-edge,
and irreparable fractures,
softly unfolding a silent China,
a piece of anecdote that cannot enter history,
national affairs,
grudges of the rivers and lakes,
are all within silence.
Then our meeting—
does it begin in this life, or in a past life?
I horizontally examine the sword,
its cold, curved willow leaf,
like the deeply furrowed brows of the palace in those days,
the thin, mottled handle,
like the tooth-mark oath of biting the arm on the night the city fell:
“Since you have left,
I think of you like sun and moon;
sun and moon flow like water,
without end.”
Years hurt and pass, seasons change again,
even if we meet again, we do not recognize each other,
and cannot slowly tell each other,
in that instant of life and death in those years,
how mutual support in adversity,
in the rivers and lakes of sword shadows and blade light,
became a destiny impossible to separate.
The most heartbreaking still is──
after separation, meeting again,
can only sigh, cannot question,
cannot again pledge life and death,
only able to use the remaining present life,
to repay the abandonment that once caused you to be covered in dust.
The poet Zhang Cuo’s lyric poetry carries the sentiment of an overseas wanderer and the love-hate entanglements of martial rivers and lakes. Poems such as , , , , , etc., contain both beauty and sorrow. This romantic lyric style is not something ordinary young poets can imitate. Zhang Cuo is skilled at incorporating classical allusions into poetry, giving poetic works historical background and cultural meaning. Although the syntax appears prose-like, within sectional transitions it tightens imagery and forces the emergence of artistic conception: “you silently present yourself naked / with waves of blade-edge / and irreparable fractures / softly unfolding a silent China / a piece of anecdote that cannot enter history,” where the depth and vision of poetry unfold naturally through historical and cultural reflection.
A fondness for conjunctions and transitional phrases is a syntactic feature of Zhang Cuo’s poetry. The use of such conjunctions and transitions of course reduces poetic density, relaxes structural tension, and elongates lines, making rhythm gentle and prose-like, thus approaching prose poetry. Therefore Zhang Cuo appropriately inserts several classical-language phrases to adjust this, resulting in a mixture of classical and vernacular language, producing a “visual and auditory illusion” that is both classical and modern. This poem uses a “first-person dialogic performance,” adopting a “spoken rhythm,” allowing the reader to seem to be present within the poem’s narrative scene, while the interweaving of classical diction creates an atmosphere filled with martial-world emotions of love and sorrow.
〈The Bud of Spring〉 / Lu Hanxiu
Although spring will always often rain
but with you and me coming to take care of it
no matter how heavy the dark rain outside the sky may fall
there will always be a heavenly star to light the road
you are the most beautiful bud of spring
for you I am not afraid of being drenched and soaked
you are the bright star in the sky
accompanying you I am not afraid of distance or hardship
spring’s, spring’s buds fill the mountain slopes
only with you is there good fragrance
night’s, night’s stars fill the sky’s edge
without you I do not know where to go
【Note】
often: frequently.
but: however.
very dark: extremely dark.
most beautiful: “shang shui,” meaning the most beautiful; “shang” also equals “best,” “shui” equals “handsome.”
soaked: dripping wet.
that: that.
fill mountain slopes: covering the hillsides.
where: where.
In recent years, the poet Lu Hanxiu has been “spare no effort” and has achieved “remarkable results” in promoting “Taiwanese-language song poetry.” He uses the “elegant register” within Taiwanese to write poetry, thereby elevating the artistic conception and literary quality of Taiwanese song lyrics, gradually changing the general impression of Taiwanese song poetry as “rustic and vulgar.”
Due to long-term political interference, the development of “Taiwanese language and literature studies” stagnated for a rather long period after the war, causing the revival of “Taiwanese literature” and “Taiwanese-language literature” to be delayed by nearly thirty years. In the diachronic process of language, due to political intervention and erroneous policy distortion, Mandarin (Beiping speech) gained absolute dominance and became the main spoken and written language of daily life, while Taiwanese, Hakka, and Indigenous languages were all tragically “marginalized.”
Local languages such as Taiwanese, Hakka, and Indigenous languages, as well as the folk cultures of various ethnic groups, not only urgently need preservation and documentation, but also require the government, academic institutions, and civil organizations to work together to promote the research and teaching of each group’s mother tongue, as well as the writing of literary works and the performance of folk arts.
The characteristic of Taiwanese song poetry lies in its faithful reflection of the life and cultural landscape of Taiwan’s Minnan-speaking ethnic groups. The diversity of Taiwanese phonology (eight tones and seven intonations) gives Taiwanese song poetry a rich musicality. Of course, the development of Taiwanese song poetry must proceed in parallel with research on the Taiwanese language; only then can a system of language and grammar acceptable to most Taiwanese speakers be established, allowing the musical beauty of Taiwanese to flourish through literary works and song poetry.
This Taiwanese song poem proclaims unwavering fidelity and regretless devotion in love, using diction that creates an elegant style from everyday language. Faced with the widespread problem of “sound without character” in Taiwanese writing, creators, when unable to find the proper character (original etymological character) or not knowing what it is, generally adopt one of the following solutions: (1) use Romanized spelling, (2) use homophonic borrowed (phonetic) characters, (3) use synonymous but differently pronounced borrowed (semantic) characters, (4) use dialect characters. In this poem The Bud of Spring, the poet clearly employs a mixture of all these methods.
〈If We Open the Door of the Heart〉 / Wang Changxiong
If we open the door of the heart
we will see the colorful spring light
although spring does not last long
it can always temporarily relieve our full stomach of bitterness
spring light, where are you?
hope you will always be in our hearts
if we open the door of the heart
we will see the colorful spring light!
If we open the window of the heart
we will see the beloved person
although the person is gone and the building is empty
it can always temporarily ease our hearts
beloved person, where are you?
hope you will always be in our hearts
if we open the window of the heart
we will see the beloved person!
If we open the door of the heart
we will see the homeland’s fields and gardens
although the road is thousands of miles long
it can always temporarily bring back memories
homeland, homeland, where are you?
hope you will always be in our hearts
if we open the door of the heart
we will see the homeland’s fields and gardens!
If we open the window of the heart
we will see the dream of youth
although flowers do not bloom for a hundred days
it can always temporarily relieve our full sorrow
youth, youth, where are you?
hope you will always be in our hearts
if we open the window of the heart
we will see the dream of youth!
“Wang Changxiong’s entire postwar literary trajectory leaves footprints that are probably outweighed by the brilliance of a song he accidentally wrote—namely If We Open the Door of the Heart, which he used as a book title. In 1956, the local composer Lü Quansheng, also his ‘music friend and life friend,’ invited him to collaborate on this song, and it became famous through a single composition… If one reads carefully, it is not difficult to feel that this is a song of deep lament sung by people living in a dark, closed era that was suffocating enough to make one feel breathless. This song rises from the depths of despair; the singer in the dark night carefully reminds those also in darkness that one might try to open a window with one’s own hands, believing that one can certainly see the light outside. However, the spring light outside the window can only temporarily relieve some bitterness in the stomach; spring cannot remain long. What matters for those in darkness is not to lose the spring light in their own hearts.” (Zheng Congming, “Wang Changxiong — the poet who lights a lamp for a dark age”). After this Taiwanese poem was set to music, it spread through streets and alleys, showing that when modern poetry combines with music, it can enter the masses and exert a powerful emotional impact. Modern poetry is often too elevated for the masses, and its diction tends toward difficulty and obscurity; moreover, modern poets like to chase fashionable themes and become disconnected from real life, causing their works to resemble “dream talk and delirious speech.” After reading this poem, should those poets who like to be deliberately obscure also feel ashamed?
The Han dynasty Yuefu and Tang poetry and Song lyrics, because their textual forms were well-structured, could all be “played with instruments and sung to music,” combining poetry and song, and thus widely circulated among the people as popular literature. This advantage is difficult for modern poetry, with its “freedom of form,” to match. The decline of modern poetry into a small-circulation niche literature reflects the fact that in an industrial-commercial society, modern people generally do not value literary cultivation; however, many modern poets who follow surrealism and postmodernism deliberately write grotesque, obscure poems that are difficult to read or can only be vaguely interpreted, seemingly only to defeat the already dwindling number of poetry readers. Such an attitude is truly not commendable. If modern poetry wants to return to the public, apart from the path of “combining poetry and music,” such as Yu Guangzhong’s folk-song-like Four Rhymes of Homesickness, Xi Murong’s Out of the Frontier Song, and Chen Kehua’s Butterfly Garment and The Sky of Taipei, as well as Lu Hanxiu’s Taiwanese love poems, there seems to be no better method of promotion. After twenty years of writing modern poetry, I deeply feel that modern poets have remained in the ivory tower, able only to admire themselves and lament themselves. That poetry cannot go out is the sorrow of poets, and also the sorrow of Taiwanese society as a whole.
Whether modern poetry truly needs to completely abandon the parallelism, antithesis, harmony, and rhyme of regulated verse in order to express modern people’s imagistic thinking and inner emotions still remains open to debate. After all, the reason modern poetry is not accepted by most literary readers is not only because of obscure imagery, but also because it gradually loses musical beauty and becomes equivalent to prose. Therefore, we must re-examine current modern poetry, and proceed simultaneously on two fronts: recovering the metrical qualities of modern poetry and constructing a new musicality for free verse, seriously thinking about and concretely undertaking both tasks.
Conclusion:
The rhythm and meter of modern poetry together constitute musicality; the two complement each other but should not be confused. Just as imagistic thinking together forms imagery, the abstract idea and the concrete object, although internal and external aspects of each other, should not be conflated.
Notes:
1: see Huang Yongwu, Chinese Poetics: Design Section, “On the Sound of Poetry,” p.154, Taipei, Juliu Publishing Company, May 1982, 6th printing.
2: see Chen Qiyou, Du Ye on New Poetry, “Aesthetic Foundations of Formal Design in New Poetry — Section on Gradation,” p.41, Taipei, Liming Cultural Enterprise Co., September 1983 first edition. The “Golden Section” is a rule that automatically produces a pleasing visual sense; the ancient Greeks regarded it as the most beautiful proportion symbolizing mystery. The basic method divides a line segment into two unequal parts so that the ratio of the shorter part to the longer part equals the ratio of the longer part to the whole line. If the longer part is b and the shorter part is a, its abstract algebraic form is as follows:
a : b = b : (a + b)
Using geometric methods, one can easily obtain the approximate value of the golden ratio:
1 : 1.618, 2 : 3, 3 : 5, 5 : 8, 8 : 13, 13, 21……
3: see Li Yuanluo, Poetic Aesthetics, “Chapter 11: The Alchemy of Language,” p.672, Taipei, Dongda Publishing Company, first edition 1990.
Note 4: see Zhu Guangqian, Poetry Theory, “Chapter 5: Poetry and Prose,” Complete Works of Zhu Guangqian 3, p.112, China, Anhui Education Publishing House, first edition 1987.
Note 5: see Zhu Guangqian, Poetry Theory, “Appendix 2: Poetry and Prose (Dialogue),” Complete Works of Zhu Guangqian 3, p.320: “Rhythm is syllables with regularity; syllables are rhythm in sound.”; my teacher Xiang Ming, Fifty Questions on Modern Poetry (Part 1), “Question 24: Rhyme and Rhythm,” p.96: “Rhythm is the ups and downs between sentences, also called beat; rhyme is the end-line rhyme of sentences, also called homophony.”
Taipei, Erya Publishing House, first edition February 1997.
Note 6: see Zhu Guangqian, Poetry Theory, “Chapter 6: Poetry and Music — Rhythm,” Complete Works of Zhu Guangqian 3, p.133: “Poetic rhythm is both musical and linguistic. The proportion between these two rhythms varies according to the nature of poetry: pure lyric poetry is close to song, and musical rhythm often outweighs linguistic rhythm; dramatic poetry and narrative poetry are closer to speech, and linguistic rhythm often outweighs musical rhythm.”
Note 7: see Yang Kuanghan & Liu Fuchun (eds.), Modern Chinese Poetics: Part I, “On Rhythm,” written by Guo Mo; p.112: “What we can see with our eyes is called ‘movement rhythm’; what we can hear with our ears is called ‘sound rhythm.’”; note by the author: the former such as “bright moon shines between pine trees,” the latter such as “clear spring flows over stones.”
Note 8: see Yang Kuanghan & Liu Fuchun (eds.), Modern Chinese Poetics: Part II, “Humming-type rhythm (chanting tone) and speaking-type rhythm (recitation tone),” written by Bian Zhilin; p.14: “The new poetry we see today, analyzed by whether each line ends with a two-syllable pause or a three-syllable pause, can be divided into two basic tonal directions. If a poem predominantly ends with two-syllable pauses, its tone tends toward spoken style (equivalent to the old ‘recitation tone’); if it predominantly ends with three-syllable pauses, its tone tends toward singing style (equivalent to the old ‘chanting tone’).” Guangzhou, Huacheng Publishing House, 3rd printing April 1991.
Note 9: see Research on Children’s Poetry Writing, Chapter 4: “Language of Children’s Poetry,” Section 3: “Musical Language,” pp.180–210. Professor Chen Zhengzhi divides musicality into (1) internal musicality (internal rhythm) and (2) external musicality (external rhythm). The former is further divided into: (a) semantic rhythm: isochronous repetition of pauses, (b) emotional rhythm: equalized repetition of emotional intensity. The latter is further divided into: (a) auditory rhythm: periodic repetition of sound patterns, (b) visual rhythm: isomorphic repetition of stanza forms. This classification is clear in structure and of great reference value.
Note 10: “Language mixture” differs from “classical–vernacular mixture”; the simultaneous use of two or more regional languages (Beijing speech and Taiwanese) is merely a problem of “language mixture.” Although it may cause a certain degree of reading difficulty for readers without bilingual ability, it is somewhat better for the rhythm and meter of the poetic text than the case of “classical–vernacular mixture.” If the several regional languages used in “language mixture” are all written in vernacular rather than classical Chinese, because vernacular tends toward “spoken rhythm” while classical Chinese tends toward “chanting rhythm.”
Note 11: same as Note 9, see pp.198, 205, and 208.
References
- Chinese Poetics: Design Section, Huang Yongwu; Taipei, Juliu Publishing Company, May 1982, 6th printing.
- Du Ye on New Poetry, Chen Qiyou; Taipei, Liming Cultural Enterprise Co., September 1983 first edition.
- Poetic Aesthetics, Li Yuanluo; Taipei, Dongda Publishing Company, 1990 first edition.
- Complete Works of Zhu Guangqian 3: Poetry Theory; Anhui Education Publishing House, 1987 first edition.
- Fifty Questions on Modern Poetry (Part 1), Xiang Ming; Taipei, Erya Publishing House, February 1997 first edition.
- Modern Chinese Poetics: Part II, ed. Yang Kuanghan & Liu Fuchun; Guangzhou, Huacheng Publishing House, April 1991 3rd printing.
- Same as Note 6.
- Same as Note 6.
- Research on Children’s Poetry Writing, Chen Zhengzhi; Taipei, Wunan Publishing House, June 2002 second edition, first printing.
- Huang Qingxuan, Rhetoric, Chapter 24: Parallelism, p.469, Taipei, Sanmin Publishing, 2009 second edition.
下一則： 第六章、新詩的音樂性(中)
