CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
INTERVIEW WITH CHEN DU
Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: We love how place feels very carefully rendered in “Dust on the Sill,” with significance in small details. Did you have a specific place in mind when you were writing this poem?
Chen Du: Poetry is very often relevant to life, that is, a poet can be more or less, either consciously or unconsciously, influenced by his or her life, what he or she has observed, learned, experienced and thought about in life, and so on. Realizing a good poem should address some universal perspectives that can transcend boundaries and resonate among the unlike-minded, I have been trying to find the connections, stories or principles among different phenomena. While I was approaching the window of my room on a sunny day, the imagery of a moonlit, dust-laden, grey, concrete sill came into my mind. It’s not someplace special, just a combination of a common sill in China and tranquil, bright, colorless moon night, totally out of imagination. I was wondering where the dust came from. Then the image of rocks being weathered as if in a cartoon reminded me of the possibility that the molecules and even atoms of the dust may come from something seemingly 100% irrelevant, e.g., bones. In the last two stanzas of the poem “Dust on the Sill,” I expressed the idea that I may be the dust that would be counted by someone else, thus creating a loop.
RR: We’re interested in your use of spacing and formatting. How do you approach form and formatting when you write, and how does a poem come together for you?
CD: In my case, poetry writing is a process involving conscious flow, subconscious mind, and even subjective initiative or subjective compulsion, each of which has a different weight and function at different stages in the creation process. Human emotions have no punctuations. Neither do thoughts. Punctuations are creations of the humankind. The only punctuations human emotions and thoughts may have are pauses or short intervals. This is somewhat consistent with the innate nature of human thinking, i.e., jump thinking, as human thinking should be like the universe that is governed by the principle of entropy increase. Both conscious and subconscious flow and even subjective initiative or compulsion are inseparable to extensive and intensive training either conscious or subconscious to counteract entropy increase in some sense.
Therefore, I do not think a natural poem should have any specific form; however, we can create something for our own purpose. For example, in a few lines of my poem titled “Aspirations,” I juxtaposed together different objects, which are separated by spacing, to create several imageries, e.g., a secluded mist-veiled mountain view, a dark bleak wilderness with lonely lamp light and howls, and a temple in a deep mountain, where a visitor can smell the incense, hear the chimes and watch a row of startled soaring birds.
RR: We’re also interested in your minimalist punctuation, and how some of your poems include very little punctuation except for occasional ellipses and exclamation marks. As a poet, how does punctuation factor into your writing process?
CD: As I said in my answer to the second question, when a poet is following the flow of his or her mind during the creation of a poem, there shouldn’t be any punctuations or should at most be some pauses. Nevertheless, a poet can also creatively modify the form or endow new meanings to the form of a poem. For example, since any two adjacent lines are naturally separated, this form can be considered as a natural comma, period or pause. The spacing I am talking about in the second question can also be regarded as a creation as it’s not a simple listing of different objects, but rather a synchronized depiction or display of different elements which can form a four-dimensional view or imagery.
RR: We see you have an academic background in the sciences. How do your experiences there influence or play a role in your poetry writing?
CD: I believe in “好文不在文中，功夫亦在文外,” which is my own words or creation, meaning a good piece of writing also embodies expertise outside the writing. As a matter of fact, my academic background in the sciences has helped me develop scientific thinking, e.g., logical, rigorous and exact thinking. Nonetheless, partially for lack of rigorous scientific training over the past eighteen years, I have gradually nurtured creative and divergent thinking by unshackling my mind during the writing of English essays, articles, etc. It’s really a complicated process as many factors play a role in it.
As to how science experiences might influence one’s poetry writing, take logical thinking for example, logic may ruin a poem, however, it can also perfect a poem. In the poem “Dust on the Sill,” there are at least three details that are logical or conforming to the fact. For example, the condensation and evaporation of dust may happen most probably on a quiet night, but not during the hustle and bustle of the day. The moonlight added some poetic imagery and the possibility of spotting the phenomena about the dust by “me,” the poet, which process is somewhat like a Chinese freehand brushwork. Moreover, the molecules or atoms I have addressed in the first question may have some scientific principles or references. At last, the loop about the dust is a kind of logic.
RR: What brought your focus to the world of literature and poetry?
CD: For various reasons, I haven’t been able to engage in my beloved biophysics field for the past eighteen years. Instead, I started to write English essays for a living, which has been a kind of wonderful training for me. As I wrote in my poetry collection entitled Pilgrimage, “During my harshest time in Xi’an, writing poems comforted and accompanied me on many of my darkest, lonesome, helpless and hopeless, insomnia filled nights. Developing this new talent of mine has given me an escape from an irrational, absurd, unusual reality into a creative, joyful, hopeful and beautiful universe.” I have to admit I had serious chemical imbalance in my brain during that period of time in the year of 2016. So the reality then was that I sought help from poetry writing instead of medical professionals, and it indeed worked. Therefore, writing poems was more a process of subjective initiative or compulsion aided by subconscious flow than a process of conscious mind to me at that time.
Of course, I need to say I received some training in literature and poetry before graduate school and I was good at Chinese writing at school in China just like most other top Chinese students into the sciences, otherwise I wouldn’t have passed the national college entrance examination in 1991. Composing scientific articles at a top graduate school in China and a PhD program at SUNY at Buffalo has also helped me polish my writing skills in English.
Certainly all of my past experiences can factor into my poems. Therefore, I am grateful for what life has endowed me. Last but not least, I have fully demonstrated my creativity. Truly, a good piece of work also embodies workmanship outside the work!
Chen Du’s work in Issue 8.3: