Wreckage

by Ha Jin

Poetry. Asian American Studies. New poems by the author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award. Ha Jin's writing has been called luminous and eloquent by The New York Times Book Review, extraordinary by the Chicago Sun-Times and achingly beautiful by the Los Angeles Times. Asianweek calls him a master of lyric.

Genres: Poetry, China

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ha Jin is the pen name of Jin Xuefei, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University.Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.

Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.

Reviews

[Michael Liaw]

Being an ethnic Chinese having lived most of my life outside of Chinese history/culture/myths, the "Wreckage" was a really enjoyable read. I was mostly unaware of the historical/mythical characters that were involved in the poems, but it didn't prevent my having resonance with the stories.

Poetically, I felt Ha Jin relied a little too heavily on his abilities as a wonderful fiction writer. Many of the poems begin in the tone of anecdotal or historical recording, only to rush to a poetic two line epiphany at the end. The first section (The Cycle of the River) was the most enjoyable in this respect for me. It felt to me that Ha Jin was able to get at interesting angles with this lens then he was with the personal.

Over all, I liked it. His anecdotal/historical poems are relentless in their close-ups, unabashed, and committed to telling the story, reviving the unspoken voices of which he writes (The Script):

So today we write the same script
that is atemporal - a stone lyre
among the chorus of living tongues.
It has bound us together, synchronizing
our songs and shrieks, and kept hundreds
of dialects noteless on the page.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are good for their historical context and humanizing some of the most famous, and infamous, storied from ancient China. I particularly enjoyed the ones about the early dynasties.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a slender book of poems in English by this Chinese expatriate, who is also a novelist.

In style, they somewhat resemble the wonderful historical poems of Cavafy, but they are rawer and more bitter, evoking such matters as cannibalism in famine, foot-binding, opium addiction, and the Western humiliation imposed on China.

Simple, evocative, and profound short poems, if you can stand the horror. These are poems that Goya could have written, if he wrote Chinese-style history poems in English.

I’ve ordered Ha Jin’s essay on expatriate writers in English. I’ll bet he has important things to say. He’s published ten novels or so. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

[jacob-felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

the two poems i read at the library formed a rather unrepresentative impression of the book, but i am still enjoying it.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

truly a poet. so that means one must proceed with caution, exercising small doses unless you are truly brave

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Each poem is like a little short story, possibly based in fact, I don't know.  Some of the stories are incredibly brutal.  Some were so awful, I felt ill reading them.  The writing felt a bit stolid - I don't see the lucid and luminous lyrics that the critics praise.  I found one review explaining that Ha Jin quotes many well-known works of Chinese literature in his poems, so perhaps I'm not knowledgeable enough to "get it."   One just star means I didn't like it - I'm not in any position to be judging the literary value of this book.

A Burial
We were pulling a bundle packed
with green branches and earth,
twenty feet across
and a hundred feet long.
We were to lodge it in place
to plug the holes burrowed
by foxes and badgers.

Singing in one voice, we sank
the bundle along the dike.
Immediately two boats loaded
with rocks were scuttled
against the bundle.

As the second boat was going down
it dragged Ah Shan into the water,
his legs caught by the gunnel.
He yelled, "Oh Mama, help!
Get me out, brothers!"

We tried
but couldn’t pull him out.
Not daring to give the river time,
seven hundred men rushed over
to drop sacks of earth and rocks.

So—we buried him alive.
For days his voice
squeaked under our soles.

The dike was saved.  Now
miles of stones cloak its surface,
but every April
Ah Shan's mother throws
dumplings into the river
and begs the fish not to eat her son.

[Earth&Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, emotionally and morally messy, sometimes bitterly ironic portrait of humanity in the Chinese Empire. As it accelerated towards the end I was left wanting to know more. Realizing my education gave me very little of China, and wondering which specifics were true and what was poetic elaboration, and where I can learn... I might really need to put some research on my future booklist.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haunting imagery of the darkest moments throughout Chinese history. "The Making of a Eunuch" and "Human Pig" are two of the most disturbing things I've ever read. Ha Jin has mastered the art of creating heartbreaking and horrifying narratives that force us to reexamine our own humanity.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

With candid and accessible prose, Ha Jin’s poems in Wreckage deliver a sobering exploration of the history, myths, folk lore, and legends of his Chinese homeland. As the title indicates, this collection is no celebration of China’s nobility, but rather a reckoning with its past full of cruelty, corruption, and misguidance. However, what emerges among all the horror and madness is the resilience, spirit, and hope of everyday villagers and citizens as they struggle and survive in face of the rampant ambition and grave megalomania of too many of China’s past state officials.