Wake Up! Wake Up!
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Summary
Xu Zhimo was a brilliantly gifted poet. His poems take up love, life, landscape, and the hardships of the human world. His lines are fresh and lucid, his metaphors striking, his imagination rich, his imagery graceful, his thought untrammeled and ever-changing; at the same time they carry a Romantic and aestheticist coloring and pursue disciplined, sumptuous artistic form, with a distinct artistic personality. His poetry is a world of many colors, and his heterogeneous ideas find expression one by one within it. The Complete Poems of Xu Zhimo gathers the four collections published in his lifetime—Poems of Zhimo, A Night in Florence, The Tiger, and Wandering Clouds—and adds his other poems, brought together under the title Awake! Awake!.
Editor's review
This book brings Xu Zhimo's four poetry collections—Poems of Zhimo, A Night in Florence, The Tiger, and Wandering Clouds—together with poems left out of them into a single volume under the general title Awake! Awake!, offering readers a relatively complete path through Xu Zhimo's poetry. His poems take up love, life, landscape, and the hardships of the human world; the lines are fresh, the metaphors striking, the imagination rich, the imagery graceful and ever-changing, with a Romantic and aestheticist coloring. The arrangement keeps each collection intact, making it easy to see the poet's changing subjects and formal pursuits at different stages; his attention to disciplined, sumptuous artistic form also lets readers sense the exploration of modern Chinese poetry between meter and free verse. It suits slow reading on a quiet night or an afternoon, and can serve as an introductory anthology for understanding the early face of modern Chinese new poetry. As you read, watch how the same images shift across collections, and the tension between lyric and narrative.
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy modern Chinese new poetry and want to read Xu Zhimo systematically
- Literature lovers interested in Romantic and aestheticist poetry
- Chinese teachers who need a modern poetry anthology for teaching or reading groups
- General readers who want to feel the rhythm and imagery of language in short poems
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer tightly plotted, strongly narrative novels
- Readers hoping to draw systematic social analysis or textual-historical verification from poetry
- Readers uncomfortable with the language of lyric poetry and with limited patience for reading poems
Reading tips
- Read one collection straight through first, then compare treatments of the same images in the other collections and feel how the poet's style changes.
- Choose three to five poems each time and read them aloud, attending to line breaks and rhythm, then go back to the metaphors and word choices.
- When you meet a poem you like, copy out a passage and note your first response; there is no need to rush into background research.
- After finishing the book, return to the general title Awake! Awake! and consider its place and meaning within the whole.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 挽李幹人
- 草上的露珠儿
- 夏日田间即景（近沙士顿）
- 听槐格讷（Wagner）乐剧
- 春
- 沙士顿重游随笔
- 情死（Liebstch）
- 私语
- 小诗
- 夜
- 清风吹断春朝梦
- 你是谁呀？
- 青年杂咏
- 月夜听琴
- 人种由来
- 无儿
- 康桥西野暮色
- 悲观
- 威尼市
- 梦游埃及
- 地中海中梦埃及魂入梦
- 《两尼姑》或《强修行》
- 笑解烦恼结（送幼仪）
- 北方的冬天是冬天
- 小花篮
- 我是个无依无伴的小孩
- 悲思
- 铁柝歌
- 幻想
- 题西湖所摄照片之后
- 花牛歌
- 八月的太阳
- 山中大雾看景
- 一个噩梦
- 白话词十二首
- 那一点神明的火焰
- 诗句
- 给母亲
- 四行诗一首
- 海边的梦
- “拿回吧，劳驾，先生”
- 秋阳
- 贺寿诗（五言古风）
- 《出其东门》白话写意
- 小诗一首
- 泰山
- 她在那里
- 荒凉的城子
- 在车中
- 醒！醒！
FAQ
Which of Xu Zhimo's poetry collections does this book include?
According to the materials, the book includes the four collections published in his lifetime—Poems of Zhimo, A Night in Florence, The Tiger, and Wandering Clouds—and adds his other poems, brought together under the title Awake! Awake!. Readers can follow the order of the collections, or begin with works they already know.
What subjects does Xu Zhimo's poetry mainly take up?
The materials sum them up as love, life, landscape, and the hardships of the human world. The lines are fresh, the metaphors striking, the imagination rich, the imagery graceful with untrammeled thought, and they carry a Romantic and aestheticist coloring. As you read, watch how different subjects interweave within the same collection.
Do I need to know the history of new poetry first to read this book?
Not necessarily. You can begin by reading the poems out of interest and feeling the language and imagery; if you want to go deeper, then use the arrangement of the collections to understand Xu Zhimo's writing at different stages. The book keeps each collection intact, which is friendly to general readers; just read in order.
Is it suitable as a model for learning to write poetry?
It can be consulted in part. The materials emphasize striking metaphors, rich imagination, and a pursuit of disciplined, sumptuous artistic form, which can inspire the handling of imagery and rhythm; but poetry writing also involves personal experience and language training, so a single poet should not be taken as the only model.
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About the author
Xu Zhimo
Author · Chinese · 1897–1931
Xu Zhimo (1897–1931) was a native of Haining, Zhejiang, and a modern Chinese poet and essayist who became a leading figure of the Crescent Moon School. He studied in the United States and Britain, began writing new poetry in 1921, helped found the Crescent Moon Society, and edited publications such as the poetry supplement of Chen Bao and the journal Xinyue, leaving a lasting influence on modern Chinese poetry. His representative collections include Poems of Zhimo, A Night in Florence, and The Tiger. His verse is known for its clear language, gentle rhythm, and sincere feeling, often linking natural scenery with personal emotion and combining romantic sensibility with musicality; his essays are likewise graceful and free in style. The collection holds 145 of his works, including modern poetry, classic works, and translations of foreign literature such as Candide and L'Ingénu, reflecting his dual role as poet and translator. Xu Zhimo died in a plane crash in 1931.
