An argument exists about Chinese (and likely any non-Western) poetry in the twentieth century: the so-called liberation from form and traditionalism was an extension of Western colonial power, and writers who sought to "modernize" were in fact internalizing their sense of inferiority in the face of Western military and economic domination, thereby buying into Western supremacy and selling themselves into slavery. The "liberation" of twentieth century Chinese poets on formal lines is, according to this view, no more real than the "liberation" of Tibet at Chinese Communist hands (and arms): to believe in such a "liberation" requires a larger faith in the political ascendancy of free-verse, say, or Maoism.

But what about faith in the political ascendancy of free-verse? While I've gone back and forth in my own agreement or disagreement with this argument, something I've wondered most is whether a break from traditional poetic forms could be equivalent to its own political movement. To look at it this way might require that we switch from viewing free-verse poetry itself as the end, but rather to consider a particular movement within the new poetries of the twentieth century: Surrealism.

Picking Surrealism as a poetic movement to be read politically is more strategic than innocent: while contemporary Chinese poets are argued as being under the influence of Western domination, the Western writing their poetry resembles most is Surrealism. But inasmuch as Surrealism is a movement that I see as particularly focused on finding the psychologically, mythically, and poetically local, I wonder whether that is enough to counteract claims of its colonialism. In addition, Surrealism and its later adherents have been particularly politically driven. César Vallejo and Aimé Césaire (not coincidentally both translated by Clayton Eshleman) were (are) both second-generation Surrealists with a vested interest in local non-Western realities and in political expression. And before them, André Breton wrote manifesti on Surrealism with Leon Trotsky. So if we can collide, temporarily, an international Surrealist movement with the Comintern, what would Trotsky have to say about whether Chinese poetry in the twentieth century had succumbed to Western domination?

Anyhow, the above is an odd conceit and an underdeveloped thesis, and I'm not sure if I'll ever pursue it in writing to its scholarly ends. But the fixture of Trotsky, a man I know little about, and yet whose "what if" potentiality has at times both attracted and repelled me, is one I wanted to rely on as a meeting grounds between the poetic and the political, or between the avant-garde and the vanguard (kind of the way that Joyce, Tzara, and Lenin meet in Tom Stoppard's Travesties). And then a scholar I know sent me a copy of an article in which he brings up Trotsky condemning the avant-gardists--the Futurists, particularly--in Literature & Revolution and consequently in Soviet policy in the twenties.

This went against the image I had of Trotsky (in fact, the article said that while Trotsky & Stalin didn't agree on much, they both had a notorious distaste for Modernist experimentation in art), which comes from incomplete knowledge of him living with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico City. I should read Literature & Revolution, but I'm rarely one to wait until I have complete knowledge before forming an impression. I asked my scholar friend about Trotsky, and he wrote back that Trotsky got nicer after being exiled, hanging out with the only people brave enough to accommodate him--the avant-garde. Then again, he mentioned that after Trotsky was assassinated, the one to secure the murderer with an exit visa was Neruda. The poets-and-politics question was one that, as a scholar, about which he'd never been able to come to a clean conclusion.

As a scholar, the poets-and-politics question is, thankfully, endlessly complex: we get to discuss the individual cases ad infinitum, and it keeps us employed. But as a political activist and organizer as well as a writer, I have a different take on it. I wrote to my scholar friend:

I think it's nearly always a bad move to reduce the size of your own bargaining unit. The hubris of those in power, scrambling for a tighter grasp, allows them to cut others out; and whether you're a Chinese writer in the 1930s arguing for "art for life's sake" over "art for art's sake," a Soviet leader deciding on communist artistic policy, or an American worker tangled up against illegal immigration, the short-sighted solution is to be exclusive. Such a decision is, I think, based on laziness and an overestimation of the strength of one's group; why else provoke potential allies--the art for art's sake artists, the non-Social Realist artists, the illegal immigrant workers ripe for organizing--to oppose you? It's efficiency-model management, and it rarely works. What does work, I find, is more work, even if it means organizing illegal immigrants into a union or Futurists and Modernists into an understanding of the social ramifications of art.

Even from the angle of political organizing this conversation doesn't end here. But if we can remember, at the times we are scholars, politicians, and artists, to keep the long-sighted view rather than follow the efficiency model, then I think we're moving in the right direction.

And as for Surrealism and Chinese poetry, the question is not simply a matter of what historical or material conditions a poet from any country has been given, but rather a matter of what a poet does in responding to, and making art out of, those conditions.