I feel like I'm living deeper. I'm not living on the surface: I'm happy, I'm not happy, I'm going against society, I'm not going against society. Mostly I have so many options here. Whatever I want to do, I can. When I was in China, there was no challenge, you only have one thing to do, but here you have so many options.

   EBL: Do you ever feel isolated here in Providence?

   XD: I'm ready to be lonely, because I understand being lonely, solitude, this really helps me to focus on my internal life.

   EBL: Isolated physically, but also linguistically. Has speaking English daily effected the rhythms or imagery of your poetry?

   XD: I don't think speaking English affects my rhythm because when I'm writing I'm writing in Chinese. But potentially, very subtly, something's influencing, but I'm not conscious of this. One thing I can tell you in my consciousness is the way to... [pause] ...when I was in China, I wrote very big. I released my emotions toward the whole society. In America, people and society are very detailed. The way people talk is very detailed. Even the structure of English is very detailed. You have to say I'm happy, of what? I'm angry, of what, with what, about what? Americans ask. In Chinese you just say I'm angry. I think this is a cultural difference.

   EBL: Between East and West.

   XD: Chinese pursue, focus on completion more than details. Western society is so scientific, so you have to focus on details. Without details, there's no whole. In China, the whole thing is first, then come details.

   EBL: And this has affected your poetry.

   XD: Yes, I'm really focused on details more now. Line by line, word by word. This was not conscious before. I went back to China last year. I went to a poetry conference where people discussed my new poetry. 'This is a very contemporary, avant-garde style,' they said. 'So many details, the images, the views.' When I looked at the poetry, I said 'Yes.' I really had a lot of details. In China no one really writes that way. Because it's still about emotion. Everything comes out. But for me I have the general idea, but the meaning is not singular, it is scattered. Each one has its own individual meaning. Only when you put all the individual meanings together, can you see the complete meaningfulness. That's one aspect of a postmodern sensibility. The Chinese asked, 'How many collections of contemporary American have you read?' 'None,' I said. They accused me of lying. Of writing in a postmodern style. I told them probably because I'm living in that society, I'm absorbing all the styles and ways people focus on the details. So I am forced to tell details. Clarity. I've been trained by this style. Because my life is more detailed, the poem comes out more detailed.

   EBL: Is this possibly an example of American culture having touched your subconscious?

   XD: Yes. But this is about style. Details are also related to life's feeling. The new poems I've been writing is about living in a society full of choices, options. I feel like I'm able to get into myself. I'm confirmed. I want to be a poet, a writer, a good writer. I want to plant my feet into the soil, like roots, going deeper and deeper, being conscious, aware, patient to do whatever I'm doing. There's also lots of comparison with my past, culture, serious thinking of my life, self-understanding, self-retrospection. This really made my poetry become more and more different. That's the content, the meaning. It's not just about style.

   EBL: Content influencing form.

   XD: I'd like to emphasize that I think content is mostly from one's spirit, which is what poetry is about.

   EBL: Because Russia and China came to consumerism later than other nations, it's easier to see how they're being affected. Do you feel the ideology of American-style capitalism is more or less conducive to Poetry than Chinese-style communism?

   XD: I think [American-style capitalism] can mix well with poetry. Everything can mix well with poetry, because poetry is the experience of life. If people experience that kind of lifestyle, live that way, it will definitely match to poetry. Coca-cola and entertainment and enjoyment of life are another thing. I'm not extreme and go against development of more enjoyment and consumption to feel and enjoy life more, but when you sink too far into it, people begin to lose the sensation of the spirit. Because the more you encourage your body to encounter the consumption, all the consumption, the less relation you have to the spirit.

   EBL: Why is that necessarily so?

   XD: If you live a quiet life, you can understand yourself. Capitalism can be very noisy: bars, rock-n-roll, concerts, beach, vacations.

   EBL: And jazz concerts?

   XD: That's different. Rock-n-roll for me is releasing, bringing everything out, screaming out your emotions, feeling of life. When you release that much you can become inhuman. You see all the violence at rock concerts. You don't see this kind of violence with jazz. Emotion is dangerous when it's flying around, hanging in the air. Emotion doesn't go in deep. Emotion gives you power to release a lot of things, but it doesn't help you seriously think about your life. That's the way I wrote poetry while living in China. Emotion can make an artist very powerful, very strong, but how deep? You could say emotions are one of the deepest things in human life, but I feel how much really dark...[pause]...you're not just showing dark, you also have to put lights inside the dark, to light the darkness, to let people see the shape of darkness, to let them see in the center or behind the darkness that there is a light. That's the whole point, in my understanding. I feel rock-n-roll is sheer darkness; releasing all the emotions. There's no release of light. There's nothing really going down into the ground. I don't mean I don't like rock-n-roll. I like the Doors, but jazz and new age and classical and opera have touched me more. You have to feel something going up and coming down. Then you feel complete. You don't feel cut off, like you're flying around in the wind with pure emotion. You have to have something really stay with your soul. Stay with the depths of human life. That kind of understanding and feeling probably makes you a good writer, a good artist. Without those things, I doubt it. You could be good at one specific thing, a very good Language poet, and very good emotional poet, but that's very narrow. I'm talking about writing as a way to understand life, a way to express one's feelings related to that life.

   EBL: How is this releasing of emotion different in poetry for you?

   XD: I'm releasing, but that's one end: going up. In the mean time, another end is reaching down. It's like a tree. I always feel that my life should be like a tree. The topside is going up to the sky, to eat sunshine, but the roots are going down down down. The deeper the roots are, the higher the tree can rise.

   Providence, Rhode Island August 1997Originally published at Arts and Letters, No. 4, Fall 2000

(An Interview with Poet Xue Di--"Releasing: Light and Darkness" 全文完博讯www.peacehall.com)