Book Review: Lin, Nikky. Imagining Modern Poetry: Poetic Modernisms in Taiwan. Springer Nature, 2025.

“… Taiwan’s modern poetry,” writes Nikky Lin in the “About This Book” that precedes Imagining Modern Poetry: Poetic Modernisms in Taiwan, “has received inadequate scholarly attention within Sinophone language and literature studies” (ix). For the readership of Taiwan Lit and the Global Sinosphere, I would like to frame my review of Lin’s book around this statement, as it highlights what is great about her study, as well as what is still lacking. In brief, while it is highly successful as a much-needed English-language history of modern and contemporary poetry from Taiwan, and it offers much fodder for Sinophone approaches in terms of highlighting the multilingual past of Taiwan’s modern poetry, it nevertheless falls short of its potential when it comes to thinking through the Sinophone and its current turn toward the translingual and translational.

Why has scholarly attention to poetry from Taiwan within Sinophone studies been so inadequate? In addition to the obvious trend away from poetry toward narrative, film, media, and culture more broadly in all humanities disciplines since the heyday of New Criticism and Structuralist Linguistics, while the discourse of poetry itself has seemed to have gotten all the more insular and enclosed, there is also the fact that poetry written in twentieth-century Taiwan was for a time able to be called “Chinese poetry” tout court (I have in mind Wai-lim Yip’s Modern Chinese Poetry (1970) and Julia C. Lin’s Essays on Contemporary Chinese Poetry (1985), both of which deal exclusively with poets based in Taiwan).¹ Wai-lim Yip, trans., <em>Modern Chinese Poetry: 20 Poets from the Republic of China</em>, 1955-1965 (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1970); Julia C. Lin, <em>Essays on Contemporary Chinese Poetry</em> (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985). That is no longer the case. Not long after poetry written in the People’s Republic of China became worth reading again for literary (instead of just sociological or ideological) interest, and “contemporary Chinese poetry” could refer to poetry from China, the democratization of the Republic of China on Taiwan unleashed the fact that the majority of cultural producers there no longer seem interested in identifying with being “Chinese.” And so we are back to the earlier issue of humanities scholars caring less about poetry while poets write more and more for readers who have encyclopedic knowledge about poetry but no one else: Understanding a society’s poetry is not easy, and it bears very little explanatory power for how that society operates. This is one of many reasons that, for all its achievements and debates, Sinophone Studies has left poetry almost entirely out of its purview.

Why studies of poetry from Taiwan might not have been framed as discussions of the Sinophone is harder to figure out. Perhaps it has to do with China being thought of as a “nation of poetry” (詩的民族),¹ Michelle Yeh, “‘There Are no Camels in the Koran’: What Is Modern about Modern Chinese Poetry?,” in <em>New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry</em>, ed. Christopher Lupke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 13. which means that poetry in Chinese retains, despite what I wrote in my previous paragraph, some semblance of a claim to Chineseness, and thus those interested in poetry from Taiwan might be less compelled by discussions of the Sinophone, at least in Shu-mei Shih’s configuration of it as pertaining to “the Sinitic-language communities and cultures outside of China” and, by extension, of Chineseness?¹ Shu-mei Shih, “Introduction: What Is Sinophone Studies?,” in <em>Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader</em>, eds. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 11.

Yet some scholars who focus on poetry and Sinophone studies are pushing a new definition, which might end up changing Sinophone studies as a field. The framing of the debate that had been oppositional for so long, between Shih’s exclusion of China and David Der-wei Wang’s counter-notion that it be “included without” (baokuo zaiwai 包括在外), may no longer be as key as it once was.¹ David Der-wei Wang 王德威, “文學旅行與世界想象” [Literary Trajectories and the Global Imagination], <em>United Daily News</em>, July 8, 2006, sec. Literary supplement. For an elaboration, see Wang’s “Sinophone States of Exception,” in <em>Sinoglossia</em>, eds. Andrea Bachner, Howard Chiang, and Yu-lin Lee (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2023), 201–211. Instead, a new approach is emerging, “a translational and transcultural attitude toward the Sinophone and the Sinosphere,” as Simona Gallo and Martina Codeluppi have put it, “envisaging the latter as a kaleidoscope of linguistic and cultural articulations.”¹ Simona Gallo and Martina Codeluppi, “Introduction: Sinophone Poetry as an Interlingual Space,” in <em>Mother Tongues and Other Tongues: Creating and Translating Sinophone Poetry</em>, eds. Simona Gallo and Martina Codeluppi (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 1. In 2023 the editors of Sinoglossia presented their critique of the “distinct limitations in existing theorizations of Chinese culture,” including “limited attention to mediation and mediality” and a “continual deferral of translational issues, challenges, and problems” as “a supplement to the paradigm of Sinophone studies.”¹ Andrea Bachner, Howard Chiang, and Yu-lin Lee, “Introduction,” in Sinoglossia, 1. Even more recently, the calls for addressing these limitations seem to be coming from within the house of Sinophone studies: At a recent conference on The Concept of the Sinophone and Translation Studies in Toronto, Nick Admussen argued that our notion of the Sinophone needs to be based in local practice and understood as “a sociological body as influenced by ethnic studies, rather than a conceptual category,” as it is made up individuals who “move fluidly, including movement into and out of the PRC, and it includes people who have vastly different levels of literacy and fluency in the languages they speak.” “The people I visualize as Sinophone do not reliably stay outside the borders of the PRC, either conceptually or physically,” he said.¹ Nick Admussen, “Interlinguistic Invention as Sinophone Translation” (The Concept of the Sinophone and Translation Studies International Symposium, University of Toronto, March 28, 2025). For Gallo and Codeluppi, likewise, Sinophone poetry “constitutes a genre encompassing hybrid, polyphonic, and polymorphic literary practices inherently bound to translingualism and, therefore, to translation,” with Sinophone writers understood “as subjects attempting to traverse borders (national, cultural, and linguistic) by means of literary creation.”¹ Gallo and Codeluppi, “Introduction: Sinophone Poetry as an Interlingual Space,” 2. It is in this approach that Lin’s Imagining Modern Poetry brings up the potential for her study of poetry from Taiwan to make a real contribution to Sinophone studies, yet also where she and certain habits of English-language publication prevent her book from doing so.

Lin’s chapters lay out a chronology of Taiwanese poetry, with case studies mostly on poets treated as individuals or in pairs. After the introduction (marked chapter one), chapter two looks at the poetry of Yang Chichang [Yang Chih-chang] 楊熾昌 (1908–1994) and Long Yingzong [Lung Ying-tsung] 龍瑛宗 (1911–1999) in “Surrealism in Taiwan Prior to World War II,” then comes another look at Long Yingzong alongside Nishikawa Mitsuru 西川滿 (1908–1999) in chapter three, “Exploring the Dual Souths of the Japanese Empire,” followed by “In Search of Pure Poetry,” about Ji Xian 紀弦 (1913–2013) in chapter four and “Imagining Modernist Poetry” for chapter five, on Lin Hengtai [Lin Hêng-t’ai] 林亨泰 (1924–2023); chapter six, “Cold War Ideology and Cultural Imaginings of Modernism in Postwar Taiwan and China,” is something of an inter-chapter, as it does not treat any poet in particular, but rather attempts a theoretical overview; it is followed by chapter seven, “Poetics of Exile,” about Shang Qin [Shang Ch’in] 商禽 (1930–2010) and exiled mainland poet Bei Dao 北島 (b. 1949), and chapter eight, “Ironic Poetics in the Work of Chen Li” 陳黎 (b. 1954). Unfortunately, the book skips all women poets, including Hsia Yu 夏宇 (b. 1956), one of the most written-about of contemporary Chinese-language poets. But almost all the chapters are well-researched and -structured, as well as clear and assignable.

The book, Lin writes,

attempts to provide an in-depth discussion of the evolution of modernist poetry in Taiwan, focusing on the period before and after World War II, and contextualizes the movement within the broader frameworks of Western, Japanese, and Chinese modernism. It addresses critical yet under-examined aspects of modernist poetics, including intellectualism, fudo [風土], pure poetry, translinguistic practice, exile, Cold War cultural ideology, and irony. By offering fresh perspectives and advancing innovative methodological and theoretical frameworks, this work hopes to expand current understandings of modernism while also addressing the historical imbalance in scholarly attention given to Taiwan’s modern poetry within Sinophone language and literature studies. (7)

Rather than an argument per se, the contextualization of “the movement” in terms of “the broader frameworks of Western, Japanese, and Chinese modernism” organizes the analysis.

Yet amidst the relationship between poetry from Taiwan and Western, Japanese, and Chinese modernism, I notice an underacknowledged potential contribution to the discussion of the Sinophone and its relationship to translingualism. In other words, perhaps Taiwan’s modern poetry has received inadequate scholarly attention within Sinophone language and literature studies, as Lin points out, because of certain limitations to Sinophone studies as we know it, and more attention to poetry might help us move past those limitations. Let me explain.

The most frustrating chapter for me was chapter six, “Cold War Ideology and Cultural Imaginings of Modernism in Postwar Taiwan and China,” which argues that Taiwan modernist poetry is contaminated by being ideologically beholden to Western liberalism and American dominance:

With its focus on the individual and exploration of the self, modernism … aligned with the American Cold War era ideology of liberalism and individualism. Thus, modernism was useful in combating the collectivist thought espoused by the Soviet camp. However, under the subjugation of anti-communist ideology, modernism’s original political collectivist utopian characteristics were inevitably diluted, shifting its emphasis to bourgeois individualism and avant-garde experimentation in order to be more palatable to elite culture. (105)

The chapter sent me back to Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang’s Modernism and the Nativist Resistance (1993), with its related argument that Taiwan’s “Modernist literary movement is … another instance of the larger project of Chinese intellectuals’ emulation of Western high culture.”¹ Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, <em>Modernism and the Nativist Resistance: Contemporary Chinese Fiction from Taiwan</em> (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 6. Chang’s book is more nuanced than this thesis may first appear, however, as she frames such Liberalism as oppositional to Taiwan’s White Terror-era dictatorialism: “The Modernists, sympathetic with liberal ideals, had also been surreptitiously undermining the government’s neotraditionalist cultural discourse by endorsing capitalist social values in their works.”¹ Chang, 15. And to be fair, Lin tries for nuance, too, adding: “it remains difficult to conclude that modernism can be reduced to a mere mouthpiece for American propaganda … While evidence shows that the USIS and American aid generously supported Taiwanese publications, activities, and individuals with modernist leanings, it remains inconclusive whether a quid pro quo relationship developed between government support and literary practice” (106). But if that is the case, then why construct an argument—in a chapter in which not a single poem is quoted—about modernism’s overdetermined ideology? Why mention that the argument is “inconclusive” in the conclusion?

Elsewhere in the book, Lin is better at explaining how modernism was not an example of ideological toadyism but rather a site of ideological struggle. Writing about Shang Qin and Bei Dao, she says, “If a poet hopes to salvage language that has been weighed down by ideology, a radical shift in approach is necessary. The only way to achieve this is to commit linguistic heresy—to estrange or intentionally transform the established language and conventional modes of narration” (123). Regarding Lin Hengtai, she writes: “In the political context of the 1950s, Lin Hengtai’s exploration of avant-garde concepts could not directly confront the ruling regime; rather, it served as an indirect critique by highlighting the formal dismantling of language to subvert mainstream aesthetic norms” (83). These readings of individual poets contradict her reading of modernism as a whole in the chapter between them. Perhaps the chapter was a late addition to the manuscript, which might explain these argumentative discrepancies? In the Introduction, she refers to chapter 7 as chapter 6 and vice-versa (5–6). At any rate, the chapter does not fit the book.

Contrast the focus on ideology, though, with what I take to be the real contribution of Lin’s study to poetry studies and Sinophone studies. It is Lin Hengtai’s translingualism, Lin writes, that contributed to his developing critique against linguistic standardization and mainstream aesthetics, how in his early works “his oeuvre predominantly consisted of works either composed in Japanese or translated from Japanese into Chinese, with only a few pieces originally penned in Chinese” (69). Lin likewise treats poetry in Chinese and Japanese, by Yang Chichang, Long Yingzong, Nishikawa Mitsuru, and their circles. And while Ji Xian’s move from the mainland to Taiwan in some ways represents poetry in Taiwan moving away from China, Lin discusses Shang Qin and Bei Dao together, as representing similar poetic responses to related contexts. These represent bold advances in the treatment of poetry from Taiwan in terms of Sinophone studies.

Lin’s book raises the possibility that if the analysis of poetry, rather than of fiction, were at the core of Sinophone studies, then our definition of the Sinophone might look quite different. The problem is, Lin’s bold advances in the treatment of poetry from Taiwan in terms of Sinophone studies are not discussed in terms of Sinophone studies, and so their boldness stays under the radar. She has “a translational and transcultural attitude toward the Sinophone” at work in modern Taiwan poetry, which “constitutes a genre encompassing hybrid, polyphonic, and polymorphic literary practices inherently bound to translingualism and, therefore, to translation” à la Gallo and Codeluppi, but she does not seem to recognize the impact or significance of her approach. In this oversight, Lin contributes to the “inadequate scholarly attention” to modern Taiwanese poetry within Sinophone studies which she decries.

Contributing to the oversight of the translingualism and transculturalism of poetry from Taiwan and Lin’s approach to such poetry are some bad habits of Anglophone scholarly publishing. While Chinese characters for the names of poets and titles of poems are included, the poems are presented in English only, as if they were written in that language. This makes translation invisible, which is to say: It hides the work of interpretation that Lin and the other translators she is quoting are doing. And it makes it not only difficult for us as readers to assess that work but also to appreciate it. Furthermore, since some of these poems were written in Japanese, not publishing the source text alongside the translations makes the translingualism of Taiwanese poetry invisible, as well. If Sinophone studies is indeed making a translingual and translational turn, printing the poems in English only does not help with the steering.

While these are criticisms, of course, they are criticisms born from the strength of Lin’s contextualizations and analysis of the poems and poets in question. Her readings are insightful and her argument is well-structured, and everyone with an academic interest in modern poetry, literary translingualism, and Sinophone literature should read this book (just skip over chapter six). But they should also realize that Lin is doing something of which she herself does not seem quite aware: By focusing on poetry, she is helping Sinophone studies expand its definition to include the translingual and translational.