Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Bing Xin was born into an extended family of traditional Confucian gentry in Fujian province. She attended Yenching University in 1923, earning a bachelor’s degree. Her 164 lyrical pieces, influenced by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s Stray Birds, were published in Morning Post from 1919 to 1921 and later collected as Stars, which won her instant fame and a study grant at Wellesley College in the United States, where she received a master’s degree in 1926. Her fluid, simple, fresh, and direct style is named after her as the “Bing Xin Style”. Bing Xin translated many of Tagore’s plays and poems, and the Chinese version of Gitanjali and The Gardener are so influential that some quotations from Tagore are mistaken as having Chinese origins. The Bing Xin Style serves as a bridge from Classical Chinese to modern Chinese poetics. ‘The Paper Boats—for Mother’ is a reflection of the poet’s love and longing for her mother and her deep attachment to her motherland. Bing Xin writes from the perspective of a child, choosing paper boats from the world of children’s games to express her delicate feelings, yet the image of paper boats drifting on the sea powerfully reflects China in the 1920s torn and struggling between the old and the new.
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