Essay - Alternate View an Imagined Alternative View from Chinese Poetry View...

Alternate View

An Imagined Alternative View from Chinese Poetry

***** from Li-Chao's Husband, or Afterward to an Afterward on Records on Metal and S*****ne"

Friend, let me advise you. Friend, do not marry. Collect yourself a nice-looking cook for the kitchen, ***** winsome maid for ***** tidying up of one's bedroom, and ***** your mother boss you around every now and then, if you are the type of man who likes that sort of thing.

***** women rather than take one woman to wife. Collect women like books. One does not read one book all one's life. Rather different ********** exist for different purposes and give readers access to different realms of k*****ledge. So it should be with *****. Have a ***** ***** for different purposes, and never settle on one single one ***** all.

If you must marry, marry a woman ***** cannot write from the country, no matter how big her feet.

Never, ***** ***** a poetess.

***** I first met her, I had no idea of the many words that could run through her mind, could run ***** her veins like poisoned blood and seep through ***** fingers onto ***** page into the print of dancing yet ugly characters that would tell my sorry tale. I thought her a woman of few *****. I thought her smile as lovely as a fresh *****nd tiny peach. I ***** my wife's feet were like ***** tiny peonies of paintings of my dreams. I thought she was like a statue, no a music*****l instrument, carved of ivory bone, white and silent save for the tunes a man might play ********** her.

***** Ch'ing-Chao's poem "Afterward to Records on ***** ***** S*****ne" first speaks ***** two men, Ch'ang-yu and Yuan-k'ai. She calls them deluded by the importance of their possessi*****s, loving collecting as ***** came to as well. ***** says that I her husb***** ***** the hoarding dise*****e, ***** a fox or a r*****t ***** keeps bits of metal. Like those creatures, ***** implies, I collected more and ***** things, all of which were somehow the same and served to reflect only ***** own image.

What poison, reader! I brought home these rubbings with the sweetest fruit to nourish my ***** silent mouth. ***** thought that by looking over them toget*****, I could teach her about a p*****ssion for knowledge and beauty beyond the love one ***** enjoy with an ignorant woman or a mere courtesan.

Once, I wished to bring ***** ***** a painting of such peonies but I ***** not afford it. She told me that it was better because I would remember it more, because I could not clutch it in my h*****. Like a fisherman who *****s only the slimy scales of the prey that eludes him, so ***** would feel about the *****, she said.

***** realize ***** was right. I do remember ***** painting and I do not remember the different between the many ***** metal drawings of old men and fish that lined the