Rethinking the Roots: The Unfinished Work of Wai-lim Yip's Daoist Modernism

Abstract

There are few writers who have been more central to the development of transpacific Chinese-English poetry and poetics than Wai-lim Yip. His works in English, including Criticism and Theory: Ezra Pound's Cathay; Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres; and Diffusion of Distances: Dialogues Between Chinese and Western Poetics, have been basic reading for American poets and students of Chinese poetry for decades. In Chinese, his footprint is even larger. Not only have his translations of English modernist poetry inspired generations of poets in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but his own poetics and poetry can be credited with having transformed some of the fundamental elements of Chinese poetic syntax and prosody. What serves to marry his work across both languages is his unified vision of a Daoist modernism—a poetics he argues can address historical imbalances of power and suggest a path toward new, more ethical forms of global cultural relations. In this interview we discuss the origin of this work, and begin to trace its impact on the possible futures of Chinese and English poetics.