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babblingbooks's review
3.0
An enjoyable assortment of poems by three Chinese authors from different generations. Themes of love, nature, loss and family appeared frequently.
I am new to poetry, and I cannot begin to analyse these poems in terms of their poetic merit. What I can do is record how reading them made me feel.
There were a few really beautiful moments in the collection that resonated with me, a couple from each of the authors in the collection. The poems of Yue Xuan, only 15 at the time of writing, in particular had a beautiful innocence and aching loneliness which I found myself pausing to reflect on.
However, there were many poems, particularly the ones which relied on plant/animal/natural motifs that went over my head. I think to really appreciate them I would need to spend some time looking into the significance of each line, and what it might mean to someone who had grown up or lived in China and understood better the layers of meaning in many of the poems.
One of my favourite lines was:
"More nights fall asleep, successively.
In your heart of hearts, the night light remains."
- Noon at Midnight, Qing Shui
I am new to poetry, and I cannot begin to analyse these poems in terms of their poetic merit. What I can do is record how reading them made me feel.
There were a few really beautiful moments in the collection that resonated with me, a couple from each of the authors in the collection. The poems of Yue Xuan, only 15 at the time of writing, in particular had a beautiful innocence and aching loneliness which I found myself pausing to reflect on.
However, there were many poems, particularly the ones which relied on plant/animal/natural motifs that went over my head. I think to really appreciate them I would need to spend some time looking into the significance of each line, and what it might mean to someone who had grown up or lived in China and understood better the layers of meaning in many of the poems.
One of my favourite lines was:
"More nights fall asleep, successively.
In your heart of hearts, the night light remains."
- Noon at Midnight, Qing Shui
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