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Empty Chairs: Selected Poems
The first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
―from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)" Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in both English translation and in the Chinese original. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
―from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)" Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in both English translation and in the Chinese original. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.
127 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2015
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331 people want to read
About the author
Liu Xia
49 books6 followersLiu Xia (born on 1 April 1961) is a Chinese painter, poet, and photographer who resides in Beijing, China. She is the wife of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
(from Wikipedia)
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 31, 2016
Dolls, cigarettes, and birds are three of Liu Xia's favorite motifs. These outwardly mundane-seeming objects recur in the text of Empty Chairs with an obsessive frequency, their appearances and re-appearances invested with a teeteringly tall mythic significance, an almost-too-heavy-to-bear symbolic weight, which augments the poems' collective atmosphere of totalitarian menace and claustrophobia. Threaded through with symbolism and surrealism the way a small unventilated room might be permeated by invisible vapors of carbon monoxide, these poems evoke Liu Xia's closely circumscribed existence after being sentenced to house arrest by the anti-democratic Chinese government while separated from her husband, Liu Xiaobo, himself also a famous poet and an even more famous prisoner of conscience. In these oppressive circumstances, her integrity remains astonishingly intact:
I can't compare life with death,
truth with fabrications,
my palms with the backs of my hands. (from "Dark Night")
Liu Xia calls on Van Gogh, Kafka, and Marguerite Duras to be her guardian angels in her time of suffering, understanding all too well how enforced solitude may be separated from insanity, despair, and death by only the width of a sheet of writing paper. "How It Stands," the final poem, enacts a dialogue between the poet and her self, in which, against the odds and against the wishes of her oppressors, she reaffirms her commitment to endure:
Why draw a tree?
I like the way it stands.
Aren't you tired of being a tree your whole life?
Even when exhausted, I want to stand.
(For the rest of the poem, go here: http://www.pen.org/blog/liu-xia-rare-... .)
I haven't liked other contemporary Chinese poetry that I've read, so at first I was afraid I wouldn't like this book, but I found it stylistically very readable, and the poetry is so honest and intimate, it sears: e.g., there's one poem where Liu Xia reflects on her strained relationship with her mother-in-law, who blamed her for Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment, and how one day she overheard her mother-in-law saying, "Oh, why won't he just die," and she never forgave her for that comment. So much pain, and yet so artistically rendered. I would recommend this book to everyone. Kudos to Greywolf Press for putting it out -- the small presses of the world are doing such good, important work.
Here are six more poems from the collection: http://lithub.com/herta-muller-on-the... .
I can't compare life with death,
truth with fabrications,
my palms with the backs of my hands. (from "Dark Night")
Liu Xia calls on Van Gogh, Kafka, and Marguerite Duras to be her guardian angels in her time of suffering, understanding all too well how enforced solitude may be separated from insanity, despair, and death by only the width of a sheet of writing paper. "How It Stands," the final poem, enacts a dialogue between the poet and her self, in which, against the odds and against the wishes of her oppressors, she reaffirms her commitment to endure:
Why draw a tree?
I like the way it stands.
Aren't you tired of being a tree your whole life?
Even when exhausted, I want to stand.
(For the rest of the poem, go here: http://www.pen.org/blog/liu-xia-rare-... .)
I haven't liked other contemporary Chinese poetry that I've read, so at first I was afraid I wouldn't like this book, but I found it stylistically very readable, and the poetry is so honest and intimate, it sears: e.g., there's one poem where Liu Xia reflects on her strained relationship with her mother-in-law, who blamed her for Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment, and how one day she overheard her mother-in-law saying, "Oh, why won't he just die," and she never forgave her for that comment. So much pain, and yet so artistically rendered. I would recommend this book to everyone. Kudos to Greywolf Press for putting it out -- the small presses of the world are doing such good, important work.
Here are six more poems from the collection: http://lithub.com/herta-muller-on-the... .
August 21, 2019
Poesie, pro kterou je třeba znát kontext.
Siao-poovi
Tohle není pěkné počasí
říkám si
pod rozpáleným sluncem
Stoupla jsem si za tebe
a poklepala ti na rameno
Vlasy mě píchly do dlaně
cítím se trochu cize
Nestihla jsem s tebou prohodit ani slovo
a stal ses osobností zpráv
Vzhlížet k tobě s ostatními
mě hrozně unavuje
Nezbývá než prchnout z davu
kouřit cigaretu
a hledět na nebe
Je klidně možné, že se právě zrodila legenda
ale sluneční paprsky jsou příliš prudké
takže ji nemohu spatřit
červen 1989
Siao-poovi
Tohle není pěkné počasí
říkám si
pod rozpáleným sluncem
Stoupla jsem si za tebe
a poklepala ti na rameno
Vlasy mě píchly do dlaně
cítím se trochu cize
Nestihla jsem s tebou prohodit ani slovo
a stal ses osobností zpráv
Vzhlížet k tobě s ostatními
mě hrozně unavuje
Nezbývá než prchnout z davu
kouřit cigaretu
a hledět na nebe
Je klidně možné, že se právě zrodila legenda
ale sluneční paprsky jsou příliš prudké
takže ji nemohu spatřit
červen 1989
January 13, 2018
Some of my favorite lines:
The silence grows into a man who keeps silent all day long.
He remembers everything but says nothing.
...
The woman fighting nothing,
in the end, was engulfed with her words by
the nothing between her fingers.
The silence grows into a man who keeps silent all day long.
He remembers everything but says nothing.
...
The woman fighting nothing,
in the end, was engulfed with her words by
the nothing between her fingers.
December 28, 2015
Fragile and unprepared,
I've been tossed into a play--there's been no
dress rehearsal
The wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia's poetry and photographic images speak of emptiness and isolation, absence and death. They are starkly beautiful and ominous, both chilling and burning. Birds cast shadows from leafless tress. Days are visions of dream and nightmare. Wife and husband are caught in a place with no past and no future, a world of symbols: thought, rather than lived.
For me the future is
a closed window
where night has no end
and nightmares can't be lifted.
Liu Xia herself is under house arrest, her work and beliefs also a crime against China. Her brother has been imprisoned for guilt by association. Are the birds that fly in and out of these words indeed free, or is this also an illusion?
....we kept the windows
open, remembering: the bird.
But we didn't talk
about it anymore.
I won "Empty Chairs" on Goodreads. The book is bilingual, containing the original Chinese opposite the English translation. Liu Xia's doll photos reinforce her words.
You've lost many things, but the dead spirits are with you,
you give up your daily life to join their shouts and cries,
but there is no answer. None.
A moving collection, vivid and shattering.
I've been tossed into a play--there's been no
dress rehearsal
The wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia's poetry and photographic images speak of emptiness and isolation, absence and death. They are starkly beautiful and ominous, both chilling and burning. Birds cast shadows from leafless tress. Days are visions of dream and nightmare. Wife and husband are caught in a place with no past and no future, a world of symbols: thought, rather than lived.
For me the future is
a closed window
where night has no end
and nightmares can't be lifted.
Liu Xia herself is under house arrest, her work and beliefs also a crime against China. Her brother has been imprisoned for guilt by association. Are the birds that fly in and out of these words indeed free, or is this also an illusion?
....we kept the windows
open, remembering: the bird.
But we didn't talk
about it anymore.
I won "Empty Chairs" on Goodreads. The book is bilingual, containing the original Chinese opposite the English translation. Liu Xia's doll photos reinforce her words.
You've lost many things, but the dead spirits are with you,
you give up your daily life to join their shouts and cries,
but there is no answer. None.
A moving collection, vivid and shattering.
November 18, 2015
[I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.]
These poems are undeniably (and almost unrelentingly) grim, though honest; a powerful account of what life is like for the loved one left behind when her beloved is jailed as a political prisoner of the state. What these poems reveal is how forced separation caused by the unjustified incarceration of one spouse has the effect of imprisoning them both. And the subsequent house arrest of Liu Xia, as reflected in her recent poetry, has only served to deepen -- and darken -- her outlook.
These poems are undeniably (and almost unrelentingly) grim, though honest; a powerful account of what life is like for the loved one left behind when her beloved is jailed as a political prisoner of the state. What these poems reveal is how forced separation caused by the unjustified incarceration of one spouse has the effect of imprisoning them both. And the subsequent house arrest of Liu Xia, as reflected in her recent poetry, has only served to deepen -- and darken -- her outlook.
September 22, 2018
Beautiful. Painful.
May 4, 2017
Liu Xia’s poems are inevitably lyrical and inescapably documentary. They take her real life and put it on poetic record. Their sentences oppress, their images are both matter-of-fact and full of despair.
Here is one of my fav:
SHADOW
for Xiaobo
One morning as I was sleeping,
a shadow hovered over me like a dream.
This shadow still blocks my vision.
Time goes by, seasons change,
but that long, cruel morning
hasn’t ended.
A chair and a pipe
wait for you in vain.
No one sees you walking down the street.
In your eyes, a bird is flying,
green fruit hangs from a tree without leaves—
since that morning, the fruit refuses
to ripen in the fall.
A woman with burning eyes
starts writing day and night
with endless dream-words while the bird
in the mirror falls into a deep sleep.
4/1997
Here is one of my fav:
SHADOW
for Xiaobo
One morning as I was sleeping,
a shadow hovered over me like a dream.
This shadow still blocks my vision.
Time goes by, seasons change,
but that long, cruel morning
hasn’t ended.
A chair and a pipe
wait for you in vain.
No one sees you walking down the street.
In your eyes, a bird is flying,
green fruit hangs from a tree without leaves—
since that morning, the fruit refuses
to ripen in the fall.
A woman with burning eyes
starts writing day and night
with endless dream-words while the bird
in the mirror falls into a deep sleep.
4/1997
December 29, 2015
Haunting! Most unusual, dramatic. My heart breaks for these two people.
May 21, 2016
As anyone knows I adore the confessional poetry style. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are my favorites. This collection would be a hybrid of Plath, Sexton and a bit of Dali! Dark surreal and telling!
February 11, 2017
Full of tragedy and sorrow.
January 10, 2018
This was heartbreaking, poignant, and beautiful.
March 2, 2018
Beautifully haunting and simplistic in its style. Liu Xia is a poet I wish I’d have encountered a long time before now
March 21, 2025
I managed to read this book within the course of a day and feel that it's probably best to read it quickly from cover to cover to get the full impact of the poetry. This book is a bilingual Chinese/English edition that includes a range from her early career to recent poems. I found her poems from 1997 onward to be stronger than the earlier poems. The doll poems are very evocative. Though some poems are striking, I wasn't deeply drawn into most of them. Yet the cumulative effect was insight into her struggles. It's also interesting to me that I suspected that if I were to meet her I wouldn't like her. And yet, I felt a sympathy with her struggles despite them being very different from those I have had in my life. Thus I have to say that she subtly strikes a universal cord. However, it was a bit too subtle for me to feel a strong enough connection to want to keep this book and reread it.
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December 7, 2020Beklemmend, eenzaam en wat unheimlich. Het is moeilijk om dit niet als biografische poëzie te lezen (Liu Xia is de vrouw van Nobelprijswinnaar Liu Xiaobo die jarenlang vastzat wegens zijn strijd voor democratie, en zij wordt continu in de gaten gehouden), maar het heeft daarbuiten ook nog kracht.
February 26, 2022
These poems are tremendously moving. The images, such as grapefruits, are unusual, and they linger. I am hooked. The poems waver about me, never clear, never crystalline. They whisper of struggle, of drowning. They are extraordinary.
August 11, 2019
this is mine:
A lonely life
with
LooneyTunes ending.
A lonely life
with
LooneyTunes ending.
September 4, 2019
Features a collection of 'poems' by a prisoner in China, quality word usage creates visual images. Received as a promotion, had no impact on review.
March 5, 2017
I picked up this book at the library after coming across it on the library's newly added books RSS feed. I wanted to try something a little different and read from authors I don't typically pick up.
Poetry has always been a double edged sword for me. It is either wonderfully fantastic or absurdly trite.
This collection, however, falls somewhere in between absurd and wonderful. I can sense the pain in the author's words and feel the desperation she feels under her unfair house arrest and separation from her imprisoned husband.
I didn't come reading this book with any prior knowledge of the author or what this collection would be about; I thankfully didn't need to.
After some careful thought, I've decided to rate this poetry collection a solid 3.5 stars. This type of writing is only halfway my cup of tea, so I can't give it the full 4 stars that I wish I could. It's a quick, thought provoking read that's worth picking up.
Poetry has always been a double edged sword for me. It is either wonderfully fantastic or absurdly trite.
This collection, however, falls somewhere in between absurd and wonderful. I can sense the pain in the author's words and feel the desperation she feels under her unfair house arrest and separation from her imprisoned husband.
I didn't come reading this book with any prior knowledge of the author or what this collection would be about; I thankfully didn't need to.
After some careful thought, I've decided to rate this poetry collection a solid 3.5 stars. This type of writing is only halfway my cup of tea, so I can't give it the full 4 stars that I wish I could. It's a quick, thought provoking read that's worth picking up.
January 17, 2016
Good lord, siren songs from a cage trapped in the dark. I was unprepared for the barbed lyricism of Liu Xia's verse, and was caught off guard by the deep well of individual experience on display in these poems. It is clear that poetry is more than a way for her to wrestle with the enforced absence of her husband and her own constant surveillance, but that more than this it is the undergirding of her identity, continuing to allow her to address the world, if not make sense of it.
December 18, 2016
there are plenty of high star ratings for this collection. other than a few poems I did not connect with this poet. a couple of poems about her loneliness and trying to connect with her mother in law made me feel something.
December 29, 2015
Great book
April 14, 2017
It's not that there's a strong pounding force behind these poems (by which I mean the feeling of a foot pressing down on a gas pedal insistently, like you're about to Thelma & Louise off a cliff) but there is the sense of slow claustrophobia, of your options running out, of things winding tighter and tighter. The dolls and bird imagery is unsettling, lots of cigarettes and ash. Trees in winter and the sense of being so separate from nature.
From "Rant":
Sleeping pills don't work,
and alcohol doesn't work either.
I'm exhausted and want
to stop, but this spirit in me
won't permit it.
I need to go, to go
to some great height and look down.
I need to go until I reach that height
I need to go.
From "Rant":
Sleeping pills don't work,
and alcohol doesn't work either.
I'm exhausted and want
to stop, but this spirit in me
won't permit it.
I need to go, to go
to some great height and look down.
I need to go until I reach that height
I need to go.
Read
December 19, 2017Liu Xian kotiaresti särkee sydäntä. Hänen runonsa eivät ole poliittisia vaan kertovia: anopin rakastamisen mahdottomuudesta, tupakoinnista, linnuista. Mitä pidemmälle kirja menee, sitä lohduttomampia ovat runos. Ilmeettömät nuket elämästä vieraantumisen metaforana vierailevat sivuilla yhä tiheämpään.
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April 13, 2018895.11 L7838e 2015
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews