Su Li-Zhen Descends to Earth in Her Flowered Qipao by Artemis Lin
The first thing you notice about this poem is its layout, beginning with a traditional three line left-aligned stanza. Lin then breaks free from the norm with a roughly right-aligned stanza. The layout controls the rhythm, as it moves from slower paced to faster and rambling where the lines drift away from stanza structure, to slower again with a final five line stanza which concludes in a single word. It also provides visual interest and draws the reader's eye across the page, making it easier to read. With varying levels of enthusiasm for poetry, we both felt that the layout was really interesting and added a lot to our experience of the poem. A lot of the understanding of the poem relies on cultural knowledge such as Qipao (a traditional Chinese dress with many Asian variations), xi-fan (a rice dish) and names of the movie characters. As Western readers we initially could not draw much concrete meaning from the poem, however after some research we gained greater unders...