To make a Japanese poem in English we must allow the silence to creep up upon us the way the ninja stalks and strangles his unsuspecting victim. To make an Indian poem in English we must allow the waters of language to rise and drown us like the Ganges until we are reborn in a more accessible form. To make a French poem in English we must impale ourselves upon the Tour Eiffel until our bloodcurdling screams evoke that sublime je ne sais quoi. To make a Spanish poem in English we must let ourselves be gored by the charging bull of poesy as we run like idiots through the streets waving to our friends' cameras. To make an American poem in English we must level the mountains of language with dynamite and in the rubble build an ethnic theme park of charming accents and seething quiet. To make an American poem Chinese we must silence its creepy edges and raise an iron-built mountain that mirrors our own negation to us as if it were gold.
Chinese Silence No.36 by Timothy Yu. 2016.
Timothy Yu is a Chinese American poet and scholar raised in Chicago. He received a BA at Harvard University and a PhD at Stanford University. An author of poetry and criticism, his scholarly work explores the intersections of race, identity, tradition and avant-garde writing. Notably, his first book of criticism won the Book Award in Literary Studies from the Association of Asian American Studies.
Chinese Silence No. 36 addresses Tony Barnstone’s poem, The Poem Behind the Poem:
To make a Chinese poem in English we must allow the silence to creep in around the edges, to define the words the way the sky’s negative space in a painting defines the mountains.
The parody of Barnstone’s poem illustrates the underlying cultural appropriation of Asian culture by Americans who use Orientalist tropes to make a poem appear “more Asian.” Yu’s poem appears in his newest book, 100 Chinese Silences, which is a project that demonstrates the silenced presence of Asians in American culture.
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