Cover design and paintings by Shen Chen. Additional design by Caroline Drabik.

- Contents & Excerpt
- Ordering Information

Translated by Wang Ping with Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Dick Lourie, and others. Introduction by John Yau.

NEW GENERATION: POEMS FROM CHINA TODAY

This collection features twenty-four Chinese avant-garde poets, who have emerged during a period of tumultuous change in China. This anthology presents poems written in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, an event that provides a deep, resonant undertone to the work which comes through even in translation.

The preface by editor Wang Ping delves into the nexus of the spiritual and political, noting how the Communist Party, in an attempt to revalorize itself in the minds of the citizens, "undertook a strategy that has more or less continued until today, launching one 'socialist spiritual civilization' movement after another to stave off 'bourgeois liberalization'." The paradoxes of such a plan are well documented by these poets, most all of whom see as their task "not to celebrate heroism and utopian idealism, but to reconnect with reality by destroying the facades of decency, beauty, and sublimity which were obscuring language and art".

"Many American readers are by now familiar with the Misty generation poets of China, but far too few readers are aware of the diversity of Chinese poetry since then. Wang Ping's anthology is the first to feature leading poets of the new generation through translations that are collaborations with many fine contemporary poets. This is an important and moving collection." - Arthur Sze

"Here is a chorus of rising voices in contemporary Chinese poetry. Some of them are contemptuous; some brave; some humorous; some desperate... Together they represent the new poetic sensibilities that have completely shed the shadow of the Misty Poetry. These poems are passionate, defiant, and evocative - a great pleasure to read." - Ha Jin

Many of the poems in this anthology have appeared in the following literary journals: The World, Tinfish, Talisman, River City, China: Here and There, Now and Then, and Manoa: The Zigzag Way. Che Qiangzi's "Hand-copied Paperback" first appeared in XCP: Cross-cultural Poetics.