Where Yang Wan-li Speaks Across the Years

Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China by Yang Wan-Li by Yang Wan-Li
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very readable and enjoyable collection of Sung Dynasty poems by Yan Wan-li.

Most of the poetry included here is autobiographical and intimate--the poet is visiting a monastery, or is traveling by boat to a new post, or is playing with his children, or is visiting historical sites, or is getting sick and depressed and can't sleep. We find lots of the natural imagery common to Chinese poetry in any era--rivers and lakes and mountains mostly, along with everything around the edges of those things:

Today there is no wind on the Yangtze;
the water is calm and green
with no waves or ripples.
All around the boat
light floats in the air
over a thousand acres of smooth, lustrous jade.

However, only a few exclude the poet from the scene, and his voice is present even in those. "I sit watching the sun set over the lake," one begins. Another: "I see a fly/ warming himself on the windowsill." A third: "I stand by the stream waiting for the moon to rise." He's not writing about places and vistas; he's writing about himself experiencing those things.

He returns west after a posting that didn't work out, and he feels like the land knew he'd be back: "I guess I never fooled the milestones;/ they reprimand me for ever going east." Yang Wan-li is self-consciously part of the setting he is describing, and his feelings in that moment are frequently as important as any other element of the poetry's composition.

In his later years, his health really brings him down, and he speaks openly about depression. In "Rising From a Nap at Noon," he writes: "Just as I'm feeling most depressed... a breeze blows through the northern door," bringing the scent of orchids, and "this old man feels refreshed." At other times, though, even nature can't cure him. He can't sleep, or doesn't have the energy to read anymore, and he feels like he's standing outside of time. In a poem about late spring, he writes, "the scene is beautiful, but I'm feeling bad;/ everyone else is happy; I alone am depressed." And again, elsewhere: "I am ill" he says, "and spring looks like autumn to my sick eyes."

The most striking lines, for me, were these, where he remarks on the lonely feeling of depression on a sleepless night:

My pain cries to heaven,
but heaven does not know.
Or heaven does know, but does not care.

Ouch. And I get it.

The lines may be from the Sung Dynasty, but they are full of sense, direct and accessible, even now, 800 years later. There's a real person writing these words, and that connection is what makes the art so powerful.

Recommended. It's a slim volume of about 100 mostly short poems, but also includes an introduction with useful background information and context.

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