Chapter 9: A Sorghum Plant Mistakenly Planted in a Buckwheat Field

——Reading Two Poems by Yu Xiuhua

“How Sexy a Yard Full of Corncobs Is”

Is their yellow merely a color?

At this moment, my narration is interrupted; I lose my way among a yard full of corn.

To be any one of them would make me affected.

To be any one of them would make me ill-intentioned.

They lie scattered in every direction, careless and unrestrained.

Fine then, before such arrogance, I am willing to bow my head.

I rudely imagine them as male reproductive organs.

I kick them into the air, or I crush them under my feet.

No one prevents me from becoming a queen.

When I am kind, I also make popcorn,

letting them observe like flowers—

——love, or perhaps loneliness.

In fact, there was little rain this year; the corn grew worms and became moldy.

I am certain those worms are all female.

So I pinch them to death without the slightest mercy.

The worm-eaten corncobs are thrown aside by me—

——people whose hearts have been stolen by vulgarity.

“If a Flower Were to Bloom”

Although in the village, on a morning when no carts or horses pass by,

I still do not know what to do with it.

Because I understand that process so well—the determination of lifting fire out of water,

and the despair of blooming all the way to the end.

We are all people who have once bloomed.

Swallowed by life and then spat out again, we have also been captured by fate.

It is always somewhat frail, both what is seen and what is hidden.

Those emotions are choosing the proper moment and the proper petals.

At this moment, should I chase a train,

or a rainfall? We trust this world without reservation.

I always cannot help persuading myself:

let a flower walk into the light,

and then retreat once more into the darkness.

Reincarnation arrives here.

We gaze at one another,

and each gives rise to a compassionate heart.

In the contemporary poetry scene across the Strait in 2015, Yu Xiuhua, who came from a rural background, rapidly became famous on the internet with her poem “Traveling Across Half of China to Sleep with You” (Note). By boldly exposing the suppressed sexual desires of rural women and challenging the taboos surrounding women's bodily discourse within a semi-closed society, she quickly attracted attention and became a female poet closely watched by poetry readers.

Judging solely from the signified meanings of the imagery in this poem, if it were placed within Taiwan’s modern poetry scene, this kind of female erotic writing would actually not be considered particularly explicit. Among Taiwan’s female poets, the erotic writings of Luo Ying, Xia Yu, and Yan Ailin often display female sexual organs and intimate objects in abundant detail, which might leave readers across the Strait astonished, or even lead them to denounce such works as “licentious.”

Yu Xiuhua’s poetry should not be discussed solely through the narrow lens of feminism. Her poems contain reflections of real life in rural Chinese society, expressing the straightforward thoughts and lived experiences of people from the lower social strata—workers and farmers. In essence, her work embodies two characteristics of realist poets: a sincere and grounded style of writing and a close engagement with social realities.

As a result, Yu Xiuhua, standing among various female poets from refined and privileged literary circles, resembles “a sorghum plant mistakenly planted in a buckwheat field.” Though conspicuous and seemingly out of place, she remains upright, striking, and impossible to ignore.

Both of these poems are written from a first-person perspective and belong to the genre of monologue poetry. Through sensory observations of her living environment, the poet expresses her personal experiences and reflections.

The notable features of “How Sexy a Yard Full of Corncobs Is” include:

(1) Through associative resemblance, the second stanza links male reproductive organs with corn.

(2) The poet’s attitude toward the corn projects her conflicted feelings—love, resentment, attachment, and bitterness—toward the symbolic representation of the male phallus:

“I kick them into the air, or I crush them under my feet”

and

“When I am kind, I also make popcorn,
letting them observe like flowers—
love, or perhaps loneliness.”

(3) The cause of this inner conflict is indirectly suggested through the lines:

“The corn grew worms and became moldy;
I am certain those worms are all female.”

These lines imply that the poet’s own man (her husband) has been unfaithful, and that the women outside the marriage are metaphorically represented by the worms infesting the corn.

(4) The poet’s attitude toward both the outside women and the unfaithful man is expressed in the lines:

“So I pinch them to death without the slightest mercy;
the worm-eaten corncobs are thrown aside by me—
people whose hearts have been stolen by vulgarity.”

There is absolutely no compromise. On the one hand, she wishes to kill the worms; on the other hand, she discards the worm-eaten corncobs. Here, the corncobs function as a metonymy for men.

The distinctive feature of “If a Flower Were to Bloom” lies in its extensive use of contrast.
The depiction of these opposing states creates tension throughout the poem:

(1) The contrast between determination and despair:

“the determination of lifting fire out of water
and the despair of blooming all the way to the end”

(2) The contrast within life experiences:

“We are all people who have once bloomed;
swallowed by life and then spat out again, we have also been captured by fate.”

(3) The contrast of hesitation and indecision toward an uncertain future:

“At this moment, should I chase a train
or a rainfall? ...”

(4) The contrast between light and darkness:

“I always cannot help persuading myself:
let a flower walk into the light, and then retreat into the darkness.”

(5) The contrast embodied in the ending:

“Reincarnation arrives here;
we gaze at one another, and each gives rise to a compassionate heart.”

The theme of “If a Flower Were to Bloom” contains a hypothetical proposition.
Using the central image of “a flower,” the poet constructs a series of contrasts to express her journey in understanding love—from the initial stage of longing, through the realization of its changeable and unpredictable nature, to an eventual insight that there is no need to remain anxious over gains and losses in love.

Instead, each person may carry a compassionate heart, living while “gazing at one another,” no longer entangling themselves with one another, nor tormenting one another.

From the emotional landscapes of these two poems, readers can vaguely sense that the poet may once have experienced a marriage marked by betrayal.
As a result, she no longer holds beautiful fantasies or one-sided expectations regarding love.

When reading these two poems, one can feel a distinctly healing quality. For men and women who have suffered emotional wounds or whose marriages have run aground, these poems should evoke profound resonance and understanding.

Note:

“Traveling Across Half of China to Sleep with You”

In fact, sleeping with you and being slept with by you are almost the same.

They are nothing more than the force generated by the collision of two bodies,

nothing more than the flowers brought into bloom by that force,

nothing more than the spring imagined by those flowers,

making us mistakenly believe that life has been opened once again.

Across half of China, everything is happening:

volcanoes are erupting,

rivers are drying up,

some political prisoners and displaced wanderers who receive no concern,

elk and red-crowned cranes moving along the path of gun barrels.

I travel through a hail of bullets to sleep with you.

I press countless nights into a single dawn to sleep with you.

I am countless versions of myself running together into one self to sleep with you.

Of course, I may also be led astray by some butterflies,

mistaking certain praises for spring,

mistaking a village resembling Hengdian for my hometown.

And all of these things

are indispensable reasons

for me to sleep with you.