A core work from the second wave of Chinese modernism by an outstanding Taiwanese poet.

Ya Hsien (Ya Xian) is the penname of Wang Ching-Lin (Wang Qinglin). Born in Nanyang County, Henan Province, he was active in Taiwan's Modernist Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known for a single collection of poetry titled Abyss, published in 1968, and an expanded edition in 1971. He stopped writing poetry altogether in the mid-1960s. In 1968 he attended the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, and later attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from which he received an MA in East Asian Studies. After retiring in 1971 with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he taught and edited at a series of magazines, eventually editing the influential literary supplement of the United Daily News. He now calls Vancouver home but spends a good deal of time in Taiwan and China.

John Balcom is an award-winning translator of Chinese literature, philosophy, and children’s books. He teaches in the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation and Language Education at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school of Middlebury College. Balcom conducted translation workshops and has lectured on literary translation in the US, Europe, and Asia. He is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association and has also served on the Literary Translation Committee of the International Federation of Translators. Recent publications include Grassroots (Zephyr 2014), Stone Cell by Lo Fu (Zephyr 2012) and Trees without Wind by Li Rui (Columbia University Press 2012). His translation of Huang Fan’s Zero won the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Award in the novel/novella category. He lives in Monterey, California.

ABYSS: Table of Contents

Anatomy (prefatory poem)

Wild Water Chestnuts: Book1
Spring Days
Autumn Song
A Woman
Ringdove
Wild Water Chestnuts
Melancholia
Song
1980
Funeral Parlor
The Snake's Clothes
Under the Barber Pole
Dawn


Wartime: Book 2
Temple of the Earth God
Mountain God
War God
Beggar
Capital City
Red Corn
Salt
Wartime


Songs without Music: Book 3
Sensations of the High Seas
Voyage of Death
Ship-Board Rats
A Song without Music
Sailors, a Romance
Afternoon in a Bar
A Night in Kuling Forest


Collection of the Broken Columns: Book 4
On the Streets of China
Babylon
Arabia
Jerusalem
Greece
Rome
Paris
London
Chicago
Naples
Florence
Spain
India


Profiles: Book 5
Professor C
The Sailor
The Colonel
The Nun
Opera Actress
The Late Governor of a Province
The Circus Clown
The Forsaken Woman
The Mad Woman
Khrushchev


Weeds: Book 6
For My Wife
For R. G.
In Memory of T. H.
Burning Incense as an Offering for T. H.
For a Surrealist
Lips
Thinking of a Friend


Setting Out from Sensations: Book 7
Setting Out
Andante Cantabile
Afternoon
Spontaneous Nocturne
Nocturne
So It Is When Night Falls
The Courtyard
Easter
A Common Song
Setting Out from Sensations
For H. Matisse
Abyss


Afterword