As a scholar and poet I read Nick Admussen's book with great delight, and this delight is both intellectual and literary. Prose poetry as a modern Chinese genre or non-genre has rarely been studied in its own right. Admussen's new book not only reconstructs the rhetorical-historical development of this hybrid genre in China from the Maoist period to the recent past, but also constructs an innovative theory about how to better understand the unstable nature of Chinese prose poetry both as a literary concept and a writing practice. Rather than focusing on the “form,” “politics” or “content” of Chinese prose poetry, Admussen proposes to focus on “a particularly visible and visibly particular quality to its compositional process” (p. 1). This book's emphasis on “compositional process” represents a breakthrough in our reading and interpretation of post-1949 Chinese poetry. In chapter one, by examining a set of prose poems selected from vastly different contexts, Admussen reaches a new definition of this cross-generical genre: a Chinese prose poem means a compositional process of recitation and refusal. For Admussen, recitation is “different in intent, and almost always different in form” from citation. In a prose poem, the prior art of prose and other genres is transported “into the present,” into a prosaic-poetic voice (p. 30). Yet recitation treats prose traditions not as a transparent tool, but only as raw materials to be worked on. A recitation of the familiar “coexists with a refusal to follow” it. Refusal means the non-identity of a prose poem with pre-existing prose. The “twin movements of recitation and refusal” characterize Chinese prose poetry not as an autonomous aesthetic entity but as a compositional process. This perspective brings new light to the textual production of contemporary Chinese poetry.

With this new definition, the author uses chapter two to trace the pre-history of contemporary prose poetry, paying attention to the works of Liu Bannong, Shen Yinmo and Lu Xun. Admussen points out that prose poetry actually “has been defined twice” in China, and the more recent post-1949 “naming” used the May-Fourth “naming” of prose poetry to legitimize a retrospectively defined “tradition” (p. 51). I find particularly illuminating the discussion of Bing Xin's relay translation of Tagore's poetry from English (rather than Bengali) into modern vernacular Chinese prose, which functioned as a bridge towards the stylistic institutionalization of prose poetry in post-1949 China. Chapter three then turns to orthodox prose poetry in socialist China. The prose poems of Ke Lan and Guo Feng have largely been neglected in recent scholarship. Admussen undertakes a close reading of not only these two poets’ creative works but also their institutional activities, and by so doing, offers literary-sociological analyses of the composition of prose poetry as a community within the socialist cultural-political system. Chapter four focuses on the semi-orthodox prose poetry of Liu Zaifu, a famous reformist writer and critic in the 1980s who went into exile in the wake of the Tian'anmen Square incident. Admussen reminds us of Liu's role as an important prose poet in 1980s China, a role that has been forgotten presumably due to our interests in his other roles. Much has been said about Liu Zaifu's post-1989 thesis of “farewell to revolution.” Admussen finds in his exile writings a refusal of “the practice of recitation” (p. 126). Liu's refusal to recite any literary or political orthodox then leads to a “farewell” to prose poetry.

I find chapter five on unorthodox prose poetry most inspiring. The author's interpretation of Ouyang Jianghe's 1980s poem “Hanging Coffin” is a tour de force. In this reading, Ouyang Jianghe's long poem shows itself to be a radical example of recitation. It recites all kinds of textual and historical traditions without accepting them. The reason why this is a prose poem is not solely based on its shape or form; rather, Admussen suggests, “because the piece prefers process over structure, because it is highly condensed, and because it recites and refuses, we can learn a great deal about how and why the poem operates by reading it as a prose poem” (p. 147). He then turns to another important contemporary Chinese poet, Xi Chuan, who uses the prose form frequently and wildly while refusing to see his own work in any relation to the belles-lettres tradition of prose. Referring to the theory of literary field, the author links Xi Chuan's oppositional position-taking as an “experimental writer” (p. 156) to the poet's prosaic critique of the instrumental prose language: refusal in Xi Chuan's poetry means “a refusal to submit to the dictates of dissolved and untrustworthy prose, and it is from this type of experimental work that the prospect for new prose is brightest” (p. 162).

Another feather of this study is that it includes the author's English translations of a variety of prose poems from Chinese. Admussen's complete translation of “Hanging Coffin,” included as an appendix, is an accomplishment that needs special notice. Thus, in addition to its scholarly value, this book carries literary importance. Moreover, working as both researcher and poetic translator, Admussen gives a particularly self-reflective quality to his book: “[T]his book should itself have aesthetic value” (p. 3). He is highly self-conscious of the fact that his own discourse on poetry is also a prosaic language, a kind of prose we tend to call literary criticism or scholarship: “[W]e must use prose to explicate poems which themselves act upon prose” (p. 4). Concluding his survey of Chinese prose poetry, Admussen raises questions about his own “acts of recitation and refusal” (p. 166) in translation, close reading and scholarship. This insistence on the “simultaneity of recitation and refusal” (p. 166) has broad relevance for literary criticism vis-à-vis a post-socialist cultural landscape in China and a postmodern global context.