“Offering Incense” and Other Poems by Li Qingzhao

“My feelings, which I turn into poems, / are like magpies at night, / circling three times and unable to rest,” Li Qingzhao writes in one of the surviving fragments. Although considered the greatest female poet in Chinese history and praised for her intense Dickinsonian clarity and vision, Li Qingzhao remains relatively unknown in the West.

When I first heard Li Qingzhao’s poetry read to me by a family member, I was immediately arrested by the power of his images. The poet of the Song dynasty effortlessly offers surprises for the reader’s pleasure in every line. In one of his poems, he describes himself as “thinner than a yellow flower” (“Drunk in the Shadow of Flowers”). In another, he draws our attention to the moonlight falling on the pear blossoms: ”

Li Qingzhao (1084–1151 AD) defied cultural expectations of women by mastering ciwhich are texts set to music. He also composed scientifically wenprose essays or articles, on various topics, and written political shiliterary poems, criticism of government policy. Scholars and artists of the generations following her death recognized her as a master of her craft, a status few women achieved in Chinese history due to the lack of opportunity and encouragement for women writers. Moreover, the work of women writers has not been preserved with the same care and attention as that of their male contemporaries—and thus has often been lost to history. In a contemporary note by his fellow poet Zhou Hui, he notes that “… every blizzard (Li Qingzhao) would wear a bamboo hat and reed cloak and climb to the top of the city walls, looking into the distance in search of poems. During the composition of this work, I often imagined him standing on the edge of the city walls, facing the fury of the storm, the swirling snow around him. I tried to capture this spirit in my translations.”

When I began translating Li Qingzhao as a teenager, only one translation of his entire English work remained in print: Li Ch’ing-chao: Complete Poems (1979), translated and edited by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung. Gender plays no small role in this neglect; the US translation field has long been dominated by white men translating other men. There has been an interest in reclaiming the English translation of Chinese texts as a space where Chinese and Chinese-American voices can be heard and valued. I was compelled to translate her work not only to share the joy of its emotional intensity, but also to increase the appreciation of Chinese women writers throughout history and show how Li Qingzhao’s work speaks to writers of all ages.

Li Qingzhao himself wrote in a social context that rejected voices like his. The daughter of a prestigious and prosperous family of scholarly clerks, her parents nurtured and encouraged her literary pursuits, a rare occurrence among women at the time. By the time she was a teenager, she was already a celebrated poet, whose works were performed and memorized by well-known male poets.

During his lifetime, he published several volumes under the pseudonym Yi’an Jushi (“the easily satisfied dweller”), and his shi and wen were recognized, including a famous essay on the ci form. Today, he is mostly celebrated for the elegant immediacy and freshness of his ci – the lyrics fit existing songs with predetermined meters and timbres. The titles of the ci were often the titles of the songs they were set to, so many ci had the same title. The actual sheet music for these songs is largely lost to history. What is not lost in Li Qingzhao’s lyrics, however, is the irrepressible voice in his work that still sings to us centuries down the line.

Li Qingzhao’s enlightened view of the world is evident in the confidence with which he subverts tradition while operating within it; in the way a real, lived personality is grafted into a previously invented space of the female interior; and in the timelessness of using his creative power to document a life characterized by difficulties and sorrow. In “Butterflies Desire Flowers: Feelings of Separation,” Li Qingzhao asks, “Who will drink with me / Of wine and poems?” Who else but us? His oracular voice invites readers to sit at the table with him and share in his inner thoughts. Although he lived so many centuries ago, the explorations of his work and his world view make it feel as if his poems were written just for us – just yesterday.

—Wendy Chen