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Forms of Distance
A second bilingual collection since the author's enforced exile from China in 1989.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
58 people want to read
About the author
Bei Dao
84 books121 followersName in Chinese: 北岛
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.
Bei Dao literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.
As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (Today), the central publication of the Misty Poets, which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]
Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.
Bei Dao literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.
As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (Today), the central publication of the Misty Poets, which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]
Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 4, 2017
I've discovered Bei Dao when I was in highschool, I read his poem 'All' when I was 16 and growing up in a particularly bleak political environment, it was quiet alienating too because it seemed no one was willing to admit it was, and not much has really changed in saudi Arabia since. The poem went:
"All is fated,
all is cloudy,
all an endless beginning,
all a search for what vanishes,
all joys grave,
all griefs tearless,
every speech a repetition,
every meeting a first encounter,
all love buried in the heart,
all history prisoned in a dream,
all hope hedged with doubt,
all faith drowned in lamentation.
Every explosion heralds an instant of stillness,
Every death reverberates forever."
His sort of eloquent defeat and inescapable fatalism was really powerful to me, I had read only a couple of poems of his afterwards, but not much else, until I stumbled across this book and decided to finally read more. I find that Dao is a master of the well constructed sentence, but on the level of the poem as a whole, he may not exactly be very powerful. At the end of the book I found my self remembering phrases 'We wake like wounds' 'as doves read the human dream aloud' but not really much else, no full poems. In a way, this effect is quite compatible with his surrealism and the way he juxtaposes fragmented images scattered all across the book. It felt as if I were walking through a tunnel in which sensations, moments and images were flung at me in no apparent order. This may not be one of my favourite volumes of poetry but it did touch me deeply and I enjoyed it a lot.
"All is fated,
all is cloudy,
all an endless beginning,
all a search for what vanishes,
all joys grave,
all griefs tearless,
every speech a repetition,
every meeting a first encounter,
all love buried in the heart,
all history prisoned in a dream,
all hope hedged with doubt,
all faith drowned in lamentation.
Every explosion heralds an instant of stillness,
Every death reverberates forever."
His sort of eloquent defeat and inescapable fatalism was really powerful to me, I had read only a couple of poems of his afterwards, but not much else, until I stumbled across this book and decided to finally read more. I find that Dao is a master of the well constructed sentence, but on the level of the poem as a whole, he may not exactly be very powerful. At the end of the book I found my self remembering phrases 'We wake like wounds' 'as doves read the human dream aloud' but not really much else, no full poems. In a way, this effect is quite compatible with his surrealism and the way he juxtaposes fragmented images scattered all across the book. It felt as if I were walking through a tunnel in which sensations, moments and images were flung at me in no apparent order. This may not be one of my favourite volumes of poetry but it did touch me deeply and I enjoyed it a lot.
January 30, 2024
I came across the work of 北島 about five years ago I think, but this is the first whole book of his that I read. The star rating that I have given is not reflective of his writing; it is of the translator’s. I admit I am not a professional translator but I didn’t agree with many of Hinton’s choices, personally. Given that this site is geared towards English speakers I felt it made more sense to rate the English than the Chinese.
August 6, 2015
Forms of Distance, the Zen and Shadows of the Poetry of Bei Dao.
Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com)
Title of Book: Forms of Distance
Author: Bei Dao
Publisher: New Directions Books
Date of Publication: 1994
Page Count: 87
“Cold as the northern winds,
In December mornings . . . “
- from Exile by Enya
The voice of a new generation calling out for freedom, Forms of Distance by Bei Dao, a book of poems published in 1994, is a reflection of his life in China and his exile after the violence of Tiananmen Square in 1989. He is a citizen of China who was recruited for the Red Guard, later re-educated to be a construction worker and his years as a member of The Misty Poets, publishing a poetry magazine for 10 years that was banned. Currently, he is a university professor in Hong Kong.
Of the Summer, the dark and beautiful music of Enya rolls out, into the night. This poetry of exile, he was reunited with his wife and child 6 years later, writing and living in Europe and the United States. The images are haunting, the development of the industrial economy in China, the machine age and the shadows of the cityscape, the modern are juxtaposed with traditional nature images (flowers, sea, birds, fire, snow etc.) and the Poet’s everyday. Influenced by the rich and powerful history of the ancient civilizations of Asia, the mystique and enigma are coached in the political realities of a country with a huge population, and the contrast of personal freedom vs. social control. Highlighting the fracture or “absurdist theatre” that can come with being only one of 1.3 billion people, the poetry is broken and exists as a voice within silence. The broken poetic images of the modern contrast with beauty and create violence, existing as protest and as “Apocalypse Poetry”.
“Lament
incandescent arc welding the sky
like long-lost passions
searching for new wounds
searching for blizzards amid archives
sparks in the bellows-chamber
dreams drop with sweat
like underwater mines longing for a ship’s touch
now the sea’s gone suddenly dry
a forest of tents appears
and we wake like wounds
dignitaries speaking some other language
stroll through the refuge camp”
Also, the idea of violence and the monolith, the state, infuse the poetry with death imagery and the Zen and healing of voice, speaking the truth.
“Apple and Brute Stone
in the prayer ceremony of ocean
a storm bows down
stone watches over May in vain
guarding against that green contagion
as the four seasons take turns axing huge trees
stars try to recognize the road
a drunk using that talent for balance
breaks out from the time-siege
a bullet soars through the apple
life’s on loan”
The poem, Exit is based on an old Chinese saying, “that if you fall into a well, people will throw in stones.” This Writer interprets that to mean when there are enough stones thrown in, you can climb on top of them and get out of the well.
“Exit
for Donald Finkel
nearly everyone’s
tossing stones into my dream
wellwater and I rise together
and people find that thirst moving
like an alarm startled awake
he’s smiling at us
a moon leading the heavens away bails out of
dawn’s emergency exit
where his visa’s expired”
As New Age thought through the magic of the Internet recreates the thinkspace of the people of China, self expression, see and be seen, the arts may help create personal and actual peace. The poetry of Zen and shadows, Forms of Distance, helps create a new way, the way of the artist as truthteller, healer and peacemaker in the New Age. A brilliant read.
Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com)
Title of Book: Forms of Distance
Author: Bei Dao
Publisher: New Directions Books
Date of Publication: 1994
Page Count: 87
“Cold as the northern winds,
In December mornings . . . “
- from Exile by Enya
The voice of a new generation calling out for freedom, Forms of Distance by Bei Dao, a book of poems published in 1994, is a reflection of his life in China and his exile after the violence of Tiananmen Square in 1989. He is a citizen of China who was recruited for the Red Guard, later re-educated to be a construction worker and his years as a member of The Misty Poets, publishing a poetry magazine for 10 years that was banned. Currently, he is a university professor in Hong Kong.
Of the Summer, the dark and beautiful music of Enya rolls out, into the night. This poetry of exile, he was reunited with his wife and child 6 years later, writing and living in Europe and the United States. The images are haunting, the development of the industrial economy in China, the machine age and the shadows of the cityscape, the modern are juxtaposed with traditional nature images (flowers, sea, birds, fire, snow etc.) and the Poet’s everyday. Influenced by the rich and powerful history of the ancient civilizations of Asia, the mystique and enigma are coached in the political realities of a country with a huge population, and the contrast of personal freedom vs. social control. Highlighting the fracture or “absurdist theatre” that can come with being only one of 1.3 billion people, the poetry is broken and exists as a voice within silence. The broken poetic images of the modern contrast with beauty and create violence, existing as protest and as “Apocalypse Poetry”.
“Lament
incandescent arc welding the sky
like long-lost passions
searching for new wounds
searching for blizzards amid archives
sparks in the bellows-chamber
dreams drop with sweat
like underwater mines longing for a ship’s touch
now the sea’s gone suddenly dry
a forest of tents appears
and we wake like wounds
dignitaries speaking some other language
stroll through the refuge camp”
Also, the idea of violence and the monolith, the state, infuse the poetry with death imagery and the Zen and healing of voice, speaking the truth.
“Apple and Brute Stone
in the prayer ceremony of ocean
a storm bows down
stone watches over May in vain
guarding against that green contagion
as the four seasons take turns axing huge trees
stars try to recognize the road
a drunk using that talent for balance
breaks out from the time-siege
a bullet soars through the apple
life’s on loan”
The poem, Exit is based on an old Chinese saying, “that if you fall into a well, people will throw in stones.” This Writer interprets that to mean when there are enough stones thrown in, you can climb on top of them and get out of the well.
“Exit
for Donald Finkel
nearly everyone’s
tossing stones into my dream
wellwater and I rise together
and people find that thirst moving
like an alarm startled awake
he’s smiling at us
a moon leading the heavens away bails out of
dawn’s emergency exit
where his visa’s expired”
As New Age thought through the magic of the Internet recreates the thinkspace of the people of China, self expression, see and be seen, the arts may help create personal and actual peace. The poetry of Zen and shadows, Forms of Distance, helps create a new way, the way of the artist as truthteller, healer and peacemaker in the New Age. A brilliant read.
October 9, 2013
Contact
by Bei Dao
they finished cooking the seed
bypassed history, eluded turmoil and war
plunged deep into the mineral seam of night
and became a people
in paintings on cave walls
I come upon them
their digging fingers
pubic-bones of longing
that struggle to retrace origins
right up to the last step
where they remain in rock walls
leaving me to the outside
I walk from the cave
mingling into the stream of people moving ahead
by Bei Dao
they finished cooking the seed
bypassed history, eluded turmoil and war
plunged deep into the mineral seam of night
and became a people
in paintings on cave walls
I come upon them
their digging fingers
pubic-bones of longing
that struggle to retrace origins
right up to the last step
where they remain in rock walls
leaving me to the outside
I walk from the cave
mingling into the stream of people moving ahead
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews