RIDING PISCES
骑乘双鱼座 · Yang Lian 杨炼
PART I
FROM NON-PERSON SINGULAR
Poems by Yang Lian · translated by Brian Holton
1. For a Nine-Year-Old Girl Killed in the Massacre
The Street I see from my Window
PART I · THREE LENSES OVERVIEW
Lens I · The Line That Belongs Twice — form as thought: architecture, grammar and music →
Lens II · History That Refuses to Become Past — time against time: memory, history and place →
Lens III · The Self Lent to the Dead — who speaks: pronouns, masks, personae and the dead →
PART II · MASKS AND CROCODILE
1989 · sixty six-line poems in two sequences · fifteen close readings
The Mask That Can’t Be Taken Off (preface) →
MASKS · 面具
CROCODILE · 鳄鱼
PART II · THREE LENSES OVERVIEW
Lens I · Dancing in the Smallest Room — form as thought: architecture, grammar and music →
Lens II · Everywhere Is Therefore Here — time against time: memory, history and place →
PART III · FROM NOTES OF A BLISSFUL GHOST
Twenty-four numbered movements · seven close readings and a complete-sequence overview
1–24 · The complete sequence →
PART III · THREE LENSES OVERVIEW
Lens I · A Colour Less Than White — form as thought: architecture, grammar and music →
Lens II · Ruins Deny Murder — time against time: memory, history and place →
Lens III · Fewer than Nobody — who speaks: pronouns, masks, personae and the dead →
PART IV · SIXTEENERS
Twenty-nine poems · twenty-nine close readings and a separate compilation chapter
Sunset and Cold at Buchenwald →
Chamber Music of Possibility →
Father’s Blue & White Porcelain →
PART IV · COMPILATION CHAPTER
A critical synthesis of the twenty-nine poems, not an additional poem in Riding Pisces.
Sixteeners and the Space a Limit Makes →
PART IV · THREE LENSES OVERVIEW
Lens I · Your Own Form — form as thought: architecture, grammar and music →
Lens II · The Only Address Worth Being Reborn In — time against time: memory, history and place →
Lens III · Sixteen Painted Masks — who speaks: pronouns, masks, personae and the dead →
PART V · FROM DARK BLUE POEMS
Five individual poems and the ten movements of Sailors’ Home · eight close readings and a complete-sequence overview
The Little Room Where We Make Love (Prologue) →
Snowy Ground Below the Window →
A Night in the Purple Tulip Palace (Adagio) →
SAILORS’ HOME
PART V · THREE LENSES OVERVIEW
Lens I · A Bomb in a Sealed Container — form as thought: rhyme, architecture, grammar and music →
Lens II · The Plural of Now — time against time: memory, history and place →
Lens III · The Most Singular I — who speaks: desire, power, pronouns and the dead →
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