Chapter Nine: The Narrativity of Modern Poetry

Section One: Poems That Become Imprinted in Readers’ Minds

I. The Length of a Poem

There is a saying that goes like this: “A poet’s entire life is, more or less, the length of a single poem.”
A poet’s lifelong creative achievements, in literary history, may be recorded even if only one poem remains—if so, that alone is already something to be gratified by, with no regrets left behind.

In literary history, many poets’ representative works that have been passed down through generations are in fact only a handful.
The Tang dynasty poet He Zhizhang has a total of nineteen poems preserved in Complete Tang Poems, yet the ones readers are most familiar with are merely “Ode to the Willow” and “An Impromptu Poem on Returning Home.”

The great poet Du Fu, during his own lifetime in the Tang dynasty, was essentially not considered a “big name” at all.
Among more than ten extant Tang-era poetry anthologies compiled by Tang writers, the highly esteemed Collected Outstanding Spirits of Rivers and Mountains and Collected Vital Energies of the Restoration Period included none of Du Fu’s poems.
Even Collected Poems of Talent and Style, which selected a thousand poems, failed to include him.
Only Youxuan Collection, edited in the late Tang by Wei Zhuang, included seven of Du Fu’s poems.

This situation forms a striking contrast with Du Fu’s later veneration as the “Poet Sage.”
It reflects that the aesthetic viewpoints of Tang dynasty anthology compilers were clearly different from those of later literary historians and editors.

This phenomenon of “being unknown in one’s lifetime and only discovered after death” continues to exist even today.

Although the author’s modern poetry works and theoretical criticism—whether in quality or award records—rank among the top in Taiwan’s modern poetry circles, they are still similarly ignored by anthology editors.

The author fully understands this situation and does not feel wronged at all.
After all, the author has always been a “lone wolf who walks alone” in the modern poetry world, rarely socializing with mainstream poetry journals or influential poets.

In Taiwan’s modern poetry scene, which places great emphasis on personal connections and reciprocal favors, it seems almost inevitable that a desert ranger like myself would be marginalized and treated as invisible.

If the author truly cared about personal circumstances, he would not have consistently chosen to persist in the proud and solitary role of a lone wolf.

II. Classic Poems That Transcend Time and Space

The question “Which poems can transcend time and space and be passed down as classics?” truly may only be answered after a long stretch of history by later literary historians and readers.

However, based on more than thirty years of extensive reading of renowned poets from ancient times to the present, both Chinese and Western, the author has indeed summarized several “types” from these classic works.

(1) Reflecting the Pulse of the Times

Such as the Yuefu poem “Ballad of Mulan,”
Bai Juyi’s “Song of Everlasting Regret” and “The Lute Player,”
Du Fu’s “Spring View” and “Ballad of the Army Carts,”
Pablo Narruda’s “The Heights of Machu Picchu,”
Xiang Ming’s “Hanging Basket Plant,”
Bei Dao’s “Answer,”
Bai Ling’s “The Great Yellow River,” and so on.

(2) Exposing Social Reality

Such as Du Fu’s “Five Hundred Words on My Thoughts While Traveling from the Capital to Fengxian,”
Xiang Yang’s “Position,”
Li Minyong’s “Darkroom,”
Gu Cheng’s “Say No More, I Will Not Surrender,” and so on.

(3) Showing Compassion for the Suffering and the Marginalized

Such as Li Kuixian’s “Resident Birds,”
Ya Xian’s “The Mad Woman,”
Chen Li’s “The Last Wang Muqi,” and so on.

(4) Writing Life Experience

Such as Wang Wei’s “Thinking of My Brothers on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month,”
William Butler Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,”
Luo Fu’s “Driftwood,” and so on.

(5) Conveying Aesthetic Experience

Such as John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,”
Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,”
Arthur Rimbaud’s “Vowels,” and so on.

(6) Expressing Romantic Sensibility

Such as “Reeds” from The Book of Songs, Qin Airs,
Zheng Chouyu’s “Mistress,” “Error,” and “When the West Wind Passes By,” and so on.

(7) Genuine Emotional Outpouring

Paul Verlaine’s “It Weeps in My Heart,”
Hai Zi’s “Half a Poem,”
Xi Murong’s “A Flowering Tree,” and so on.

(8) Deeply Moving Stories

Such as Ya Xian’s “The Actress” and “The Abandoned Woman,”
and Zheng Chouyu’s “Journey,” and so on.

After careful examination, whether these impressive poems employ realism or expressive techniques (symbolism, surrealism), one suddenly discovers that their common feature is a certain degree of “Narrativity.”

1. They contain characters, time, settings, and events, forming the outline of a story.
2. They possess at least one narrative axis that unfolds the plot—from opening → development → turning point → suspense → conflict → climax → conclusion—in sequence.
3. They contain substantial dramatic tension capable of moving readers and evoking resonance.

Section Two: Bringing Story into Poetry

I. The Superior Qualities of Narrativity

Although novels and drama naturally take story as their creative core, prose and modern poetry may likewise borrow it.

From the author’s perspective, narrativity possesses superior expressive qualities, such as:

(1) Integrating the Theme

It prevents imagery (scenes) from scattering chaotically, emotions from losing focus and control, and the poem from degenerating into empty sentimentalism.

(2) Deepening Emotional Meaning

With plot progression, dramatic tension is more easily produced, deepening emotional content and amplifying the power to move readers.

(3) Strengthening Impression

Poems with stories form continuous imagery, making it easier to leave profound impressions or vivid memories in readers’ minds.

Although modern poetry is not absolutely required to possess narrativity (story structure), from the reader’s standpoint, poems with narrativity tend to be more readable, because ordinary readers:

1. Generally enjoy reading stories and directly grasp aesthetic experience and insight through narrative.
   Modern poems with story structures present imagery with clear logical progression and cause-and-effect sequences that sketch out a story outline.
2. Most readers do not possess complete rhetorical knowledge, making it difficult for them to appreciate imagery beauty, musical beauty, and artistic conception within metaphors, symbolism, and surreal techniques.

In the following section, the author will use examples from several modern poems to conduct narratological analysis and comparison, allowing readers to perceive the differences between poems with and without narrativity (story structure).

II. The Narrativity of Modern Poetry and “Narratology”

The author borrows narratological theory to discuss modern poetic narrativity because narratology was originally developed to analyze novels and drama, summarizing common principles of storytelling.

Since novels and drama involve far more elements than poetry, a process of “reducing complexity into simplicity” must be carried out.

The main structure of modern poetic narrativity should include:

• narrative subject (author),
• narrative object (theme),
• narrative form (genre),
• narrative events (story).

(I) Narrative Subject

The narrative subject includes narrative person and narrative perspective.

1. Narrative Person

In modern poetry, only the first person (“I,” monologue form) is truly the actual textual author.

The second person “you” (epistolary form) and the third person “he/she” (narrative form) are not the real narrator (textual author), but merely the recipients of narration.

In such cases, the narrative subject (textual author) becomes the “implied author” (latent author), who actually carries out the narration.

(1) First Person

The narrator adopts the self-narrative mode of “I.”
This method can be divided into two types:

• “I” tells my own story as the person involved — I am the protagonist.
• “I” tells others’ stories as an observer — others are the protagonists, while I am merely a supporting role.

(2) Second Person

The narrator addresses “you” as the narrative object.
This method includes epistolary and dialogic narrative forms.

(3) Third Person

The narrator addresses “he” as the narrative object.
This method primarily appears in the narrator (aside) form.

Section Three: Narrativity Analysis of Modern Poetry Works

I. Omniscient Perspective

“Ancient Temple” / Bei Dao

The vanished bell sounds
have woven into spider webs, inside cracked pillars,
spreading into ring upon ring of tree rings.
Without memory — stones.

In the empty and misty valley, spreading echoes —
stones, without memory.
When the path detours away from here,
dragons and strange birds also fly off,
carrying away the mute bells from the eaves.

Wild grass grows once every year,
so indifferently,
caring nothing for the masters they submit to —
whether monks’ cloth shoes, or the wind.
The stone stele is broken, its inscriptions worn away,
as if only within a great fire
could they be recognized; perhaps
along with a living person’s gaze,
a turtle would revive from the soil,
bearing heavy secrets, crawling out over the threshold.

This landscape poem, rich in historical reflection and cultural significance, adopts a third-person omniscient perspective to observe every aspect of this ancient temple.
From the sights and sounds encountered on site, it transitions into historical searching and religious-cultural exploration, gradually combing out an understanding of the existential value of the historic monument.

The entire poem is not divided into stanzas; the narrative flow appears continuous in one breath, yet through the process of shifting (imagistic) scenes, it can still be sequentially divided into:

opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax → conclusion.

1. Opening: bell sounds → spider webs → pillar cracks → tree rings

“The vanished bell sounds / have woven into spider webs, inside cracked pillars / spreading into ring upon ring of tree rings” —

The opening of the poem employs synesthetic technique that transforms sound into form, shifting bell sounds into the visual of spider webs, and then through associative similarity deepening into tree rings.

2. Development: stones → valley → echoes

3. Turning point: path detours → dragons and strange birds fly away → carry away mute bells → wild grass → monks’ cloth shoes, wind → broken stone stele

4. Conflict: stele inscriptions → a great fire

5. Climax: inscriptions reappear → a living person’s gaze

6. Conclusion: turtle revives from soil → bearing secrets → crawling out of the threshold

From this narrative axis, several key points can be observed:

(1) the author’s emotions are triggered by scenery;
(2) emotions flow with landscape and deepen toward history and culture;
(3) the deepened emotion encounters conflict (the imagined great fire);
(4) an outlet of realization is found, arriving at the conclusion:

the value of the ancient temple lies in its having once existed and borne witness to history, rather than in the permanence of its physical form.

II. Limited Perspective

“Xiang Embroidered Quilt Cover — Sent to Younger Sister Ximao” / Xiang Ming

Four fluttering purple swallows,
two clusters of blossoming flower branches —
with just these faint strokes,
you have densely embroidered the words
you wished to say to elder brother
onto this thin piece of silk.

Such a readable family letter indeed —
not a single written word,
folded up less than a foot long,
yet once received, it sinks a floating heart.

Hesitating long — should I tear open the seal?
Once torn, I fear the bleeding heart would leap out.
Most of all, at the moment of unfolding —
a wide, bright silk quilt cover
opens into a road flanked with flowers and birds;
as if stepping onto it would lead straight home.
If only one could return home so quickly —
though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately a floating root without soil.
Eyes long numbed indeed need
to roam freely in the boundless skies of the homeland.
Only — these undulating creases on the silk
are they not the hardships of life’s path?
At the end of the road there is still the sea,
and the face of the sea is still
ferocious.

Postscript: Recently, younger sister Ximao had someone bring from our old home in Hunan a personally embroidered quilt cover, with not a single word attached. Moved by it, I hastily composed this poem to send to her.

This poem, “Xiang Embroidered Quilt Cover — Sent to Younger Sister Ximao,” in terms of genre can be regarded as a “family letter.”

The author adopts the epistolary narrative perspective, where the protagonist “you” is the author’s younger sister from his hometown.

The motivation for writing this poem is precisely “thinking of a person upon seeing an object.”

Since the sister did not include even “a single word” when sending this embroidered piece, many of the poem’s episodes can only be narrated from the author’s subjective emotional perspective, making the adoption of a limited perspective both inevitable and appropriate.

In other words, the author focuses solely on the moment when he receives the embroidered quilt, where seeing the object evokes memories of the person, stirring his deep homesickness accumulated through long years of seclusion on the island, along with his longing to return home to visit family.

As for the current situation of the hometown and family, the author knows nothing and provides no account in the poem.

“If only one could return home so quickly — / though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately a floating root without soil” expresses the poet’s core viewpoint.

For most mainland veterans who remained stranded on the island due to war, such feelings are in fact an inevitable product of familial longing.

The first stanza serves as the story’s opening, depicting the embroidered quilt received after many turns of delivery, along with the floral and bird patterns and the unspoken words the sister wished to convey through needlework.

The second stanza represents the development and turning point of the story, as the author holds and reads this secretly embroidered family letter, gazing long as emotions and thoughts surge violently.

The third stanza enters the conflict of inner struggle: “should I tear open the seal?”

“Once torn, I fear the bleeding heart would leap out” — the leaping bleeding heart is clearly hyperbolic, yet within the emotional struggle it feels entirely natural and acceptable to readers.

Next comes the narrative climax:

“a wide, bright silk quilt cover / opens into a road flanked with flowers and birds / as if stepping onto it would lead straight home / if only one could return home so quickly / though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately a floating root without soil.”

The poet’s homesickness is fully stirred, and the longing for return spreads in the heart like expanding ripples.

The concluding section slightly calms the emotion and draws thought back to reality.

On one hand, the poet sighs:

“these undulating creases on the silk / are they not the hardships of life’s path,”

while on the other hand, although thoughts of returning home arise, concerns remain before understanding the other side’s official attitude:

“at the end of the road there is still the sea / and the face of the sea is still / ferocious.”

III. Peripheral (Observer) Perspective

“Kunling” / Ya Xian

At sixteen her name had already drifted through the city,
a desolate melody.

Those almond-colored arms ought to have been guarded by eunuchs;
oh that tiny coiffure — Qing dynasty people broke their hearts for her.

It must have been Yutangchun, right?
(That face cracking melon seeds every night filling the courtyard!)

“Bitter…”
she with both hands placed in the cangue.

Someone said
in Jiamusi she once lived with a White Russian officer.

A desolate melody —
every woman cursed her in every city.

“The Actress” / Xi Murong

Please do not believe in my beauty,
and do not believe in my love.
Beneath a face painted thick with makeup,
what I possess is the heart of an actress.

Therefore, please by all means do not —
do not take my sorrow as real,
nor shatter your heart along with my performance.
Dear friend, in this lifetime and this world,
I am merely an actress.

Forever within other people’s stories,
shedding my own tears.

These two poems both take stage performers as their subject matter.
Both are highly renowned, both are “character poems,” and share thematic homogeneity.

“The Actress” adopts the first-person “I” monologic narrative form, employing a limited perspective to recount the self’s story, bearing characteristics of autobiographical poetry;

“Kunling” adopts a third-person peripheral (observer) perspective.
The protagonist is “she,” a woman who from the age of sixteen followed traveling opera troupes to perform in order to survive, while the narrator is an observing “implied author,” who through a narrative voice slowly recounts this woman’s tragic fate — her turbulent and bitter personal life history.

The author of “Kunling” stands outside the story — possibly once a fan of the female protagonist, possibly once her friend.

From the stance of an observer, using plain narrative description, the author sketches the sorrowful life of this female performer:

from her youthful days performing on stage, when she once received affection and admiration from male audiences, thereby arousing hostility and jealousy among many women,

to later rumors that she cohabited with a White Russian officer —

yet her bad reputation followed her continuously; wherever she went, she would be cursed and ostracized by local women.

From this narration it can be inferred that the performer must indeed have possessed considerable beauty.
The main melodic tone of the poem is set upon the viewpoint of “beauty brings tragic fate.”

In “The Actress,” the author focuses all narration upon her own experience, without involving other surrounding characters.

The entire poem highlights several key assertions:

(1) The performance of an actress on stage is drama; the performer clearly recognizes this fact — “the actress on stage is false emotion”;

(2) The actress does not confuse “entering the role” with identity — in real life she remains herself, and performing is merely her profession for survival;

(3) The actress actively reminds the audience not to “enter the drama,” because the characters and plots in theater are fictional and not worth emotional overinvestment.

Although “Kunling” is somewhat shorter in length, its narrative structure is evidently clearer and more complete than that of “The Actress.”

It possesses a full narrative progression:

opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax → conclusion,

and because it adopts the peripheral perspective, the story主体 — narrative events and character activities — comparatively exhibit greater objectivity.

“The Actress,” by contrast, concentrates on the story’s conflictual core:

the performance on stage and real life are entirely separate realms.

Strictly speaking, it lacks a climactic segment.

In other words, the narrative scope of “The Actress” is relatively narrow.
Its strength lies in sharp focus, avoiding the drift into biographical chronicle-style narration.

The two poems each excel in their own way:

the monologic form allows deeper penetration into the protagonist’s inner emotions and psychological states,

while the narrative (observer) form enables a fuller grasp of the entire storyline and causal progression.

Notes

1. Quoted from Hu Jurén, Fiction Techniques, Taipei: Far Vision Publishing, 1978, p. 83.
2. Quoted from Xu Dai, Narratology of Fiction, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2014, p. 82.