The Chinese Lyric Sequence by Joseph R. Allen

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Chinese Lyric Sequence by Joseph R. Allen David McCraw (bio) Joseph R. Allen, The Chinese Lyric Sequence. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2020. xiii, 385 pp. $125.00. The Chinese Lyric Sequence explores a significant and nearly virgin territory. Despite a few studies of important poetic sequences, no one has ever attempted to "survey the field." Now, Joseph Allen has done so, with flair, imagination, and energy—he investigates fifteen such "sequences" in detail and mentions several others. The time span of his work covers nearly 3,000 years. Some readers will wonder: "He couldn't possibly cover everything important in one volume, right?" Indeed, Allen wisely selects sets of poetry he considers exemplary. He omits 詞 lyrics and almost all post-Tang 詩, calling [End Page 99] his selection "a reflection of my training and reading" (p. xvi). In a book that begins and ends in art galleries, Allen offers us one of many possible exhibitions, guiding us through and joining together a well-chosen series of "exhibits." In guiding his charges though this strenuous exhibition, Allen proves himself an excellent docent. Allen investigates how (mostly) traditional Chinese poets formed "macropoetic structures," ranging from loose clusters, through "more inviolable … sets" we might think of as "suites,"1 to "series" and "cycle"—terms for lyric sequences of a predetermined size (p. xvii); to "programmed lyric sequence," (p. 3) with the tightest weave. Allen describes his approach as "constructural" (p. xiv). He doesn't define the term, but context shows he wants to investigate how readers produce coherence in poetic constructions, rather than just how a given author might build particular poetic structure. This looks like a brilliant move for traditional Chinese verse, where we often don't know the author or the circumstances of a poem's provenance, and where the nature of the poetic material comes into question.2 The Chinese Lyric Sequence makes a peculiar decision about terminology, one with fateful consequences for how we understand its project. All modern critics distinguish between a poetic "series," where despite a close connection between its parts, one can switch the location of a unit without great damage, and a poetic "sequence" where, true to the name, altering the sequence of parts injures the whole.3 Given the high value attached to "lyric sequence" in these and other works, it makes sense that the book would appropriate this term for traditional Chinese works. Allen explains, while Western sequences have strongly filiated to narrative ancestors (like Petrarch's sonnet sequence), Chinese sequences hew to "spatialized" archetypal patterns (pp. 10-20, particularly referencing Andrew Plaks). In Allen's handy formulation, you find a difference between a "pilgrimage" and a "ritual itinerary" (p. 12). Though the book never admits this, one suspects a polemical motive, a desire to extend to Chinese works this privileged term from Western poetics, even at the cost of distorting its meaning. This move would not cause consternation, as long as readers adjust mentally. Though cramming Chinese poetry into Latin-based categorical classes can cause problems, literary critics need sharp-edged tools to fashion thought-provoking analyses. Without precise standard terms, readers (if not authors) get confused. Letting the history of readers' reactions determine critical judgments doesn't help here. And ditching Western-biased sequential poetics proves difficult. Time and again, Allen wonders if a series has significant "internal architecture" we can utilize. This sequential question returns, repeatedly, and we get a negative or unclear response every time. The Shijing chapter poses the "internal architecture" question three times, and three times decides "No." With the "Nine Songs," it explores the question four times and tries to proffer a [End Page 100] positive response, but none of the solutions proposed were able to convince a majority of readers (see infra). We're left with a more nebulous classification of anomalous nephological phenomena, reminiscent of Stevens's "evocations of funest philosophers and ponderers." Not that Allen would rest content with such nebulous approaches. Instead, the book ransacks available sets for a different methodology, and comes up with a solution—numerophilia. It ends up fetishizing numbers, claiming for sets of four, five, eight, nine, and ten a special power in creating "sequences."4...