Chen Du & Xisheng Chen

Interviews

【Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences (based at University of Pennsylvania)】Chen Du’s life and work are deeply intertwined with the rich traditions of literature, art, and writing. Growing up in a family that valued these disciplines, Chen was surrounded by books, calligraphy, and artistic expression from an early age. "My dad, an Associate Professor in philosophy, and my mom, who was good at drawing and art, both influenced my creative journey," Chen recalls. This nurturing environment laid the foundation for a lifelong passion for writing and translation, leading Chen to excel in literary pursuits from a young age. MORE
【Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences (based at University of Pennsylvania)】Xisheng Chen’s artistic journey is a testament to the power of language and the written word. As a Chinese-American translator, linguist, and educator, Chen has spent decades honing his craft, creating a body of work that bridges cultures and languages. His love for language began early, and his first significant work—a translation from English to Chinese—was published when he was just 22 years old. "It was published in Readers’ Digest (in Chinese) in 1986, one of the most popular media in China," Chen recalls. This early success set the stage for a long and distinguished career in translation. MORE
【Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences (based at University of Pennsylvania)】Yan An’s journey as a poet and language artist began in an unlikely setting—a remote village in Northern Shaanxi Province, where his parents and grandparents were illiterate farmers. "The rural areas in Northwestern China were very destitute in the 1960s and such an environment certainly didn’t value literature, art, or writing," Yan An recalls. Yet, this wild environment, with its close connection to the earth, nature, and the starry sky, became the backdrop for his early creative stirrings. "It was Hometown’s primitiveness that protected my pure passion for and obsession with nature," he reflects, recalling how he would sit alone on a mountaintop, watching the clouds. MORE
【NonBinary Review (Zoetic Press)】In my opinion, a poet who is a true master of poetry is capable of writing in other genres. This is because both the spiritual and technical perspectives of all artistic, linguistic forms originated in poetry. Besides poetry writing as my main everyday endeavor, I write novels as well as cross-genre essays on thoughts and poetics. Over the past few decades, I have written cross-genre essays on thoughts and poetics almost every day and have produced a large number of written materials, i.e., more than one thousand books of notes. In this way, I can involve myself in reality as of both living and poetics, and maintain my acumen for and attitude toward the world and poetry even though this stance and attitude of mine are often secretive, reticent, and self-oriented. Every few years, I would write novels that are very experimental in both the language and genre, that is, unlike the typical novels by other writers, the novels I create are completely cross-genre. By writing novels, I have also trained my patience for and accuracy in observation and expression and endeavored to discern both the relationship and delineation between artistic, linguistic imageries and realistic phenomena to prevent the non-poetic generalization of literary writing and especially poetic writing. Read Yan An, Xisheng Chen, and Chen Du's interview here: MORE
【Rappahannock Review (the literary journal of the University of Mary Washington)】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. Read Chen Du's interview here: MORE