Yu Bang 育邦

Yu Bang is a writer and poet. His collections include People I Knew, Cutting a Wutong Tree, Stopping Drinking, Return (in Spanish) and Trees and Grasses Grow Deep. He is regarded as one of the representative poets of China’s post-70s generation. He lives in Nanjing.

Yu Bang on poetry:

A poet is one of those types of people who finds writing difficult, for whom writing is a kind of paralysis, a torture crueler than death. But in return he receives gifts that are extremely luxurious—though cruel, of course. He will receive three gifts. The first is a mirror. ‘We offer up our original love, our pure singing voice, and our master generously bestows upon us a mirror through which to see the world, and also to see ourselves.’ The second gift is a golden mask. ‘He returns a tattered cassock to the lakes and mountains of his heart, and hands his tattered poems over to a small circle of intimate friends. From the king of this intimate world he receives a golden mask with which he hides part of himself, hides his expression, hides his tears or his laughter. With this mask he can walk the world’s dark corridors and brave its deepest parts.’ The third gift is a dagger. ‘Like the destruction of the Golden Pavilion, “unnameable beauty / offers up jealousy—the final pride” (Yu Bang, The Golden Pavilion) ... In the sunset of despair, in the destruction of beauty, we usher in a grand moment of nothingness and present “the structure of beauty and truth”. Thus the poet receives the dagger, his last gift. When a poet has committed suicide we will tell him, you are a poet, you must calmly accept the fate of Sisyphus. We will never be able to recite “that line”.’ (Yu Bang, The Poet's Three Gifts)