After reading many talented writers, I have gained insights into the writing craft. The ways that words and expressions ignite meaning, varied as they are, can be analyzed and critiqued for their beauty and style. Through my own efforts, I know how hard it is to write, since I always worry that my ideas fail to express their subject and that my words are even further removed from insufficient ideas. The problem is easy to understand; the solution is more difficult. So I started writing this rhymed essay to comment on elegant classics and talk about how strong and weak points find their way into our writings. Someday, I hope, it will be thought that I have captured these subtle secrets in words. To learn writing from classics is like carving an axe handle with an axe—the model is right in your hand, but the spontaneous skills needed to carve a new creation are often beyond words. What can be said, however, is verbalized in what follows.
1
The Impulse
A poet stands between heaven and earth
and watches the dark mystery.
To nourish myself I read the classics.
I sigh as the four seasons spin by
and the swarm of living things kindles many
thoughts.
In rough autumn it hurts to see leaves stripped
away,
but how tender the soft sprigs in budding
spring.
Morning frost is awe in my heart,
my ambition floats with high clouds,
I devote songs to ancestors
and sing the clean fragrance of their virtue.
I roam the classics, a forest of treasures,
and love their elegant balance of style and
substance.
Inspired, I lay down the book I was reading
and let words pour out from my brush.
2
Meditation
At first I close my eyes. I hear nothing.
In interior space I search everywhere.
My spirit gallops to the earth's eight borders
and wings to the top of the sky.
Soon, misty and brightening like the sun about
to dawn,
ideas coalesce and images ignite images.
When I drink the wine of words
and chew flowers from the Six Books,
I swim freely in the celestial river
and dive into the sea's abyss.
Sometimes words come hard—they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud
that fall right into place, shot with arrows,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations,
rhymes unheard for a thousand years.
I won't touch a flower already in morning bloom
but quicken the unopened evening buds.
In a blink I see today and the past,
put out my hand and touch all the seas.
3
Process
Search for the words and sphere of thought,
then seek the proper order;
release their shining forms
and tap images to hear how they sing.
Now leaves grow along a branching thought.
Now trace a current to its source.
Bring the hidden into light
or form the complex from simplicity.
Animals shake at the tiger's changing pattern
and birds ripple off when a dragon is seen;
some words belong together
and others don't join, like jagged teeth,
but when you're clear and calm
your spirit finds true words.
With heaven and earth contained in your head,
nothing escapes the pen in your hand.
It's hard to get started at first,
painful like talking with cracked lips,
but words will flow with ink in the end.
Essence holds content as the trunk lifts the tree;
language is patterned into branches, leaves, and fruit.
Now words and content match
like your mood and face—
smile when you're happy
or sigh when your heart hurts.
Sometimes you can improvise easily.
Sometimes you only bite the brush and think.
4
The Joy of Words
Writing is joy—
so saints and scholars all pursue it.
A writer makes new life in the void,
knocks on silence to make a sound,
binds space and time on a sheet of silk
and pours out a river from an inch-sized heart.
As words give birth to words
and thoughts arouse deeper thoughts,
they smell like flowers giving off scent,
spread like green leaves in spring;
a long wind comes, whirls into a tornado of ideas,
and clouds rise from the writing-brush forest.
5
The Many Styles
But styles are diverse;
there is no absolute standard for anything,
and since things keep changing all the time
how to nail down the perfect description?
Control of language shows an author's skills;
craftsmanship comes when rhetoric pays concept's bill.
Writing is a struggle between presence and absence.
Wade through the shallows, and if it's deep, swim.
It is all right to abandon compass and square
if you are a mirror held up to real shapes.
To seduce the eye use a florid style,
but to please the mind be precise.
Still, a full description can't be confined.
Discourse blooms when it goes beyond words.
6
Genres
Poetry (shi) is a bright web of sensuous emotion;
The rhymed essay (fu) is clear and coherent as
an exposition;
stele inscriptions (bei) are refined and faithful to
detail;
an elegy (lei) is a painful tangle of sorrow;
inscriptions (ming) are gentle and succinct but
deep in meaning;
didactic compositions (zhen) jolt you through
powerful logic;
odes (song) are gentle in tone and graceful in
style;
explanatory essays (lun) are accurate and
convincing;
memorandums to the king (zou) should be proper
and clear;
written debates (shuo) should dazzle with
eloquence.
Though there are many different genres,
they all oppose deviance and license
and insist you present your argument
with not one wasted word.
7
The Music of Words
Like shifting forms in the world,
literature takes on many shapes and styles
as the poet crafts ideas
into elegant language.
Let different cadences be used in turn
like five colors in harmony,
and though they vanish and reappear
inconstantly
and though it seems a hard path to climb,
if you know the basic laws of order and change
your thoughts like a river will flow in channels.
But if your words misfire
it's like grabbing the tail to lead the head:
clear writing turns to mud,
like painting yellow on a base of black.
8
Revision
A sentence may contradict what comes before
or trespass on what follows.
Sometimes the idea is good but words fail,
and fine words may make no sense.
In such cases it is wise to set the two apart
since they harm each other when put together.
It is delicate to judge which idea or word works
better—
a difference finer than a wheat ear's hairs.
Weigh each word on a scale;
use a measuring cord to make your cuts.
9
The Riding Crop
Sometimes your writing is a lush web of fine
thoughts
that undercut each other and muffle the theme.
When you reach the pole there's nowhere else
to go—
more becomes less if you try to improve what's done.
A powerful phrase at the crucial point
will whip the piece like a horse and make it
gallop;
though all the other words are in place,
they wait for the crop to run a good race.
A whip is always more help than harm;
stop revising when you've got it right.
10
Making It New
Perhaps thoughts and words blend
into a lucid beauty, a lush growth;
they flame like a bright brocade,
poignant as a string orchestra.
But if you fail to make it new
you can only repeat the past.
Even when your own heart is your loom,
someone may have woven that textile before,
and to be honorable and keep integrity
you must disown it despite your love.
11
Ordinary and Sublime
Flowering forth, a tall rice ear
stands proudly above the mass,
a shape eluding its shadow,
its sound refusing echoes.
The best line is a towering crag.
It won't be woven into an ordinary song.
The mind can't find a match for it
but casts about, unwilling to give up.
After all, jade veins make a mountain shimmer,
pearls in water make the river seductive,
a green kingfisher gives life
even to ragged thornbushes,
and classic and folk songs
blend in a fine contrast.
12
A One-String Harp
When an author composes too short a poem,
it trails off with a lonely feeling
like looking down at solitude with no friends
or peering into the vast sky, disconnected.
One string on a harp is crisp and sweet
but sings without resonance and harmony.
13
Harmony
Trust your words to jangling sounds
and their beauty will lose its luster.
When the ugly and beautiful mix in one body,
the good quality will be stained.
When pipes play too fast for the dancers,
they chase each other without harmony.
14
Heart
When natural reason is sacrificed for
strangeness—
an absurd and empty quest for trifles—
words are numb and loveless
like drifting souls who can never go home.
It's like plucking a thin string near the bridge:
you make harmonies without heart.
15
Dignity
When you race madly after a choral medley,
seduced by cheap and gaudy sounds,
your flashy poem caters to the vulgar taste
like the rowdy notes of a common tune.
The erotic songs of Fanglu and Shangjian
have a base appeal but have no grace.
16
Overrestraint
But if your poem is too pure and graceful
and free from wild excess,
it's blander than the aftertaste of a spiceless
broth,
thinner than ghostly harmonics from a temple
lute.
One singer plus a three-person chorus
is elegant but without allure.
17
Forming Form
Tailor the poem to be plump or slender,
look it over and consider the form.
Make changes when they're apt,
sensitive to the subtle difference they make.
Sometimes raw language conveys clever ideas
and light words carry weighty truth.
Sometimes you wear old clothes yet make them
new
or discover clarity in the murk.
Sometimes you see it all in a flash,
sometimes it takes a lot of work.
Be like a dancer arcing her long sleeves to music
or a singer improvising to the strings;
like the craft of master wheelwright Bian,
this art can't be captured by the finest words.
18
The Well-Wrought Urn
My heart respects conventional rules
and laws of composition.
I recall the great works of old masters
and see how my contemporaries have failed—
poems from the depth of a wise heart
may be laughed at by those who are blind.
Poems fine as jade filigree and coral
are common as beans on the plain,
endless like air in the world's great bellows,
eternal as the universe;
they grow everywhere,
but my small hands hold only a few.
My water jar is often empty. It worries me.
I make myself sick trying to expand my pieces.
I limp along with short poems
and patch up my songs with common notes.
I'm never happy with what I've done,
so how can my heart be satisfied?
Tap my work: I fear it clunks like a dusty earthen bowl
and I'm shamed by the song of musical jade.
19
Inspiration
As to the flash of inspiration
and traffic laws on writing's path—
what comes can't be stopped,
what leaves will not be restrained.
It hides like fire in a coal
then flares into a shout.
When instinct is swift as a horse
no tangle of thoughts will hold it back:
a thought wind rises in your chest,
a river of words pours out from your mouth,
and so many burgeoning leaves sprout
on the silk from your brush
that colors brim out of your eyes
and music echoes in your ears.
20
Writer's Block
But when the six emotions are stagnant,
the will travels yet spirit stays put—
a petrified and withered tree,
hollow and dry as a dead river.
Then you must excavate your own soul,
search yourself till your spirit is refreshed.
But the mind gets darker and darker
and you must pull ideas like silk from a cocoon.
Sometimes you labor hard and build regrets—
then dash off a flawless gem.
Though this thing comes out of me,
I can't master it with strength.
I often stroke my empty chest and sigh:
what blocks and what opens this road?
21
The Power of a Poem
The function of literature is
to express the nature of nature.
It can't be barred as it travels space
and boats across a hundred million years.
Gazing to the fore, it forms models for people
to come,
and looking aft, meditates on symbols of the
ancients.
It can save teetering governments and weak
armies;
it gives voice to the dying wind of human virtue.
No matter how far, this road will take you there;
it will express the subtlest point.
It waters the heart like clouds and rain,
and shifts form like a changeable spirit.
Inscribed on metal and stone it spreads virtue.
Flowing with pipes and strings, each day the
word is new.
