PREFACE

A CANDLE IN THE CORNER

It is as if Catherine Zhao Binxu were born to write poetry.

Each time I read her work I cannot help admiring it for its boundless, unbridled imagination as well as for its finely attuned sensitivity to language. And after admiring, I just have to read it through again. There are always some words that invite you to stay and linger.

Every word of hers is like single, flickering candle-flame, in response to the dark surrounding night which also flickers.

But what can a candle-flame do? It is not a raging fire, neither able to burst nor to illuminate. All it can do is to light up some out-of-the-way-corner and a pair of lonely eyes.

Catherine likes to sit in that corner, hiding herself away, and gaining from it the greatest possible field of vision. It is my firm belief that one sits in a corner in order to walk: As she writes in one of her poems "It is within society that I go, / But it is outside the world that I hold myself", she illuminates society and human life with her candle.

In the course of such a journey, one meets with flowers, birds and spring breezes, but one also meets with thunder and lightning. The candle-flame grows bigger with the storm, flaring up and dying down with all its might, as if it were trying to swallow something or spit it out. In this collection of poems, I also saw the candle-flame transform itself into roaring flames, "in resistance to the sunset", and to slowly rise up in every obscure corner that she had passed by.

One semester of journey in poetry is rather short. As time passes by, this collection of poetry is itself likely to end up in some corner with dust. Nevertheless, whenever a breeze blows softly over it, it will start to vibrate gently again in a corner somewhere like a heart, both in your room and in mine. At that moment, I will see a girl walking towards us, holding a candle and carrying a bundle of her poems.

That girl is meant to be forever young because of these poems. As Shakespeare says,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Xie Cun

22 June 2017