June fourth elegies

Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, but could not visit Sweden to collect it: he was then, and remains, in prison in China for the human rights activism that began with his part in the demonstrations of 1989 at Tiananmen Square and continued, in and out of jails and labor camps, for the next 20 years. Each spring-whether incarcerated or "at home in Beijing"-Xiaobo wrote a poem to commemorate the Tiananmen victims. Those raw, yet reflective, sometimes nightmarish elegies make up the bulk of this bilingual edition, put into clear English by the poet Yang (Vanishing-Line), whose extraordinarily useful afterword puts Xiaobo's sharp and sometimes allusive lines into both Chinese literary and historical context. Xiaobo rebukes his nation, "used to memorializing tombs as palaces," and his "city of near perfect/ shamelessness." He also casts a harsh eye on himself: "Self-consciousness is disaster's survivor," he reflects; "I'll strive to feel astonishment or shame." "Even if I have the courage/ to be jailed again," Xiaobo writes, "it isn't courage enough/ to excavate memories of the dead." Yang also includes other works by Xiaobo: an outraged essay about "the road of resistance I've chosen" and the materialism of modern China, penned in 2000; at the back, five quiet love poems to Xiaobo's wife, herself now under house arrest. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Currently a political prisoner in China, human rights activist and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu wrote an annual elegy for 20 years in homage to victims of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre. Characterized by passion, sorrow, guilt, and anger against the ongoing repression masked by China's rhetoric of democratization and economic growth ("Life's little comforts have pardoned the crimes"), the poems are emotionally direct and unadorned. They are cries from the heart of despair, and their imagery (helmets, handcuffs, bayonets, tanks, blood) is stark, derived from the events of that day. Despite the dehumanization he has witnessed, the poet struggles to maintain his sense of self ("my soul that's been exiled is still mine") as well as preserve a cultural and historical memory his government would like to erase. VERDICT The urgency and truly risky candor of these poems outweigh their occasional repetition and flat diction. They remind us that poetry remains a dangerous practice in some parts of the world, and that although poets may be silenced, their poems will still be heard ("One letter is enough/ for me to transcend and face/ you to speak"). Recommended for most collections.-Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.