当代美国诗人Merilyn Chin 陈美玲在复旦外院的诗歌赏析会

曾经在美国国会图书馆朗读过自己诗歌的Marilyn Chin陈美玲于11月15日下午来到了文科楼209举办了题为“Chinese Allusions and Gender Ambiguities in Marilyn Chin’s Poetry”的诗歌创作艺术朗诵会。

Marilyn出生于香港，童年过后移民至美国波特兰。她本科毕业于马萨诸塞大学中国语文学系，在爱荷华大学获得创意写作艺术硕士。迄今已经获得众多奖学金和包括美国国家艺术基金会、国际笔会约瑟芬·米尔斯奖、手推车奖、阿尼斯菲尔德·沃尔夫图书奖等在内的荣誉。她的作品被纳入在诺顿现当代文学选集、诺顿女性文学选集、诺顿诗歌选集、牛津现代美国文学选集、企鹅20世纪美国文学选集中。她的作品出现在世界各地的教科书上，也吸引众多学者对其研究。著名作品包括Hard Love Province, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty, Dwarf Bamboo等诗集，以及小说Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen。除了致力诗歌创作，她也写过短篇故事，并汇集诗人、作家、女权主义者、美籍华裔移民、文学编辑的诸多身份在美国以及亚太知名大学里教授创意写作与文学评论。

在复旦外院的诗歌分享会上，陈美玲以自己的创作历程为例，解析了东西方文化文学对她的深刻影响：虽然很早便随家人移民美国，中国古典诗歌之美始终让她着迷；她的许多诗歌都是在“译答”中国古诗——比如，回应孟浩然的《春晓》，王维的《送别》等等，由此注入诗人的情感和经历来呼应出她体现的多重身份认同与跨时空、跨语境、跨文化与语体的斑斓思想。

跨越时空的嫁接

诗人自言，她的诗歌创作是跨越时空的嫁接：她的诗歌有诸多风格，有些与中国古诗答应，有些与美国的非洲裔诗歌对话，有些诗像蓝调音乐，有些加上节奏就能变成说唱饶舌。追溯流光，她与王维、李白、杜甫、艾青、Shakespeare、John Donne、Emily Dickenson、Walt Whitman跨越时空的呼应，引发的所思所感内化成一股的清泉，从不同年代、不同国度一路走来。而诗歌就是这股清泉的容器，而这容器有着不同的形状，有些是无韵诗，有些是十四行诗，有些是意象诗。诗人以自己独特的身份，将社会问题、双重文化身份、女性主义化为一缕缕丝线，以出其不意的独特视角丰富原诗歌的内涵 ，成就一幅中西合璧、古今共鸣的画卷。分享会上诗人还朗诵表演了她广为收录于美国文学读本中的代表作“How I Got That Name”；本院英文系卢丽安老师、俄语系李新梅老师、德语系孔婧倩老师，文学方向研究生们、来院访学学者，以及美国加州大学上海代表处主任兼加州大学洛杉矶分校英语系King-Kok Cheung 教授，热烈参与讨论文学创作与族裔文学中的身分与文化融合议题。

自信、独立、勇敢、热爱生活。Marilyn就是这样一位美籍华裔的现代女性，每个月都会换一位诗人对话，写写小说和诗歌。挥一挥衣袖，留给我们的除了她的诗歌，还有那爽朗的笑声和及腰的长发，还有她皱纹也掩盖不住的年轻的灵魂。Marilyn实在是一个多面的文人，朗诵会末尾，她表演了一段将近25年前写的“自传体”诗歌，舞台上的她神采奕奕，恍惚间感觉她又回到了少女时代。

I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin
Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular
followed by that stalwart indicative
of "be," without the uncertain i-n-g
of "becoming." Of course,
the name had been changed
somewhere between Angel Island and the sea,
when my father the paperson
in the late 1950s
obsessed with a bombshell blond
transliterated "Mei Ling" to "Marilyn."
And nobody dared question
his initial impulse--for we all know
lust drove men to greatness,
not goodness, not decency.
And there I was, a wayward pink baby,
named after some tragic white woman
swollen with gin and Nembutal.
My mother couldn't pronounce the "r."
She dubbed me "Numba one female offshoot"
for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die
in sublime ignorance, flanked
by loving children and the "kitchen deity."
While my father dithers,
a tomcat in Hong Kong trash--
a gambler, a petty thug,
who bought a chain of chopsuey joints
in Piss River, Oregon,
with bootlegged Gucci cash.
Nobody dared question his integrity given
his nice, devout daughters
and his bright, industrious sons
as if filial piety were the standard
by which all earthly men are measured.

*

Oh, how trustworthy our daughters,
how thrifty our sons!
How we've managed to fool the experts
in education, statistic and demography--
We're not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning.
Indeed, they can use us.
But the "Model Minority" is a tease.
We know you are watching now,
so we refuse to give you any!
Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots!
The further west we go, we'll hit east;
the deeper down we dig, we'll find China.
History has turned its stomach
on a black polluted beach--
where life doesn't hinge
on that red, red wheelbarrow,
but whether or not our new lover
in the final episode of "Santa Barbara"
will lean over a scented candle
and call us a "bitch."
Oh God, where have we gone wrong?
We have no inner resources!

*

Then, one redolent spring morning
the Great Patriarch Chin
peered down from his kiosk in heaven
and saw that his descendants were ugly.
One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge
Another's profile--long and knobbed as a gourd.
A third, the sad, brutish one
may never, never marry.
And I, his least favorite--
"not quite boiled, not quite cooked,"
a plump pomfret simmering in my juices--
too listless to fight for my people's destiny.
"To kill without resistance is not slaughter"
says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death.
The fact that this death is also metaphorical
is testament to my lethargy.

*

So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,
married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,
granddaughter of Jack "the patriarch"
and the brooding Suilin Fong,
daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong
and G.G. Chin the infamous,
sister of a dozen, cousin of a million,
survived by everbody and forgotten by all.
She was neither black nor white,
neither cherished nor vanquished,
just another squatter in her own bamboo grove
minding her poetry--
when one day heaven was unmerciful,
and a chasm opened where she stood.
Like the jowls of a mighty white whale,
or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla,
it swallowed her whole.
She did not flinch nor writhe,
nor fret about the afterlife,
but stayed! Solid as wood, happily
a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized
by all that was lavished upon her
and all that was taken away! 

Marilyn Chin