AAP: Do you have particularly favorite poets of your own?

   XD: I like Chinese classical poets Lipo, Tufu, Lihe and Tao Yuanming. I love many foreign poets, but there are three in particular that have been very important in my writing. First, the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. His poetry saved my life. I started having hope and feeling love through reading his poetry. I was twelve. I was in my worst time and couldn’t keep going with life. In his poetry, I sensed the beauty of nature and language, the love and tenderness in this world. It gave me courage and hope to live, to try to present the same kind of beauty and love to this world by my trying. I survived. The second one: the French poet Charles Baudelaire. He taught me how to reach the bottom of darkness, how to move with the heaviness and refinedness, how to present the power of dark, the power of thinking. This helped me to sense my country and our living circumstances, and then to display the power in my writing. It helped me to train my poetry writing and infuse it with solidness, strong emotion and powerful thinking. It was suited to the pain of my early living and the history of my country’s turbulence. The third one: the Irish poet Williams Butler Yeats. He showed me how to rise from the bottom of the darkness; how to penetrate the dark and how to fly with spirit. If the poetry has the full power of presenting darkness or sadness, but there is no ascending quality, then it is only half finished. It could be excellent but not great. Yeats had a heart which profoundly sympathized with humankind; had a soul which understood humanity in all kinds of circumstances; had hands which painted and presented beauty and elegance to us – a mass of rushed, exhausted people. I learned from his poetry: you must present and create the light in your writing. You must raise humankind in spirit through your writing. You have to penetrate the hardship and darkness, and then show the beauty and hope to everyone who encounters poetry. --Originally published at Asian American Press, Week of Sept. 20-27, 2002

(In The Name of Poetry 全文完博讯www.peacehall.com)