Had several conversations with poet Wang Jiaxin at his Mark Allen Everett reading on Friday. Talked about Eugene, OR where his son went to film school, about his son's films, upstate New York, i.e. Colgate, where he had a residency, poetry readings in China attended largely (and often massively) by younger people (though that's changing, access to film, television, internet zapping attendance/attention), Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, Allen Ginsberg. But we parted before I could ask some other Qs:
Chinese poets claim Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Merwin, Bly, Heaney, Transtormer, Symborska, and other Western poets as influences. Have Chinese poets read Coolidge, Hejinian, Creeley, Bernstein, Armantrout, aND, Curry, Jarnot, Spahr? Have Chinese poets read Mallarme, Apollonaire, e.e. cummings, American and international concrete poets of the1950s-1970s? Is there concrete/visual in contemporary Chinese poety?
Are there sound poets, performance poets, street poets, vanity poets, silk napkin poets, academic poets in China?
What role does conceptual poetry play in the Chinese poetry diasopra? Where is Stephen Colbert in the Pantheon?
Is there an MFA/Phd in poetics industry? How is poetry taught in the schools?
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