The Red & White

Poetry is a scratch. Such an understanding started gradually growing within my mind when I started writing poems two summers ago, and as I continue to read, write, and share words, I’ve come to realize that the act of creating poetry—indeed, of creating anything—is a kind of “scratch” in so many regards

Admittedly, I miss those long summer days in New York, watching the sun wander into the rivers of tail lights, sharing poems with friends for the first time at the creative writing workshop of Columbia University. When the eleven of us first gathered in that often too-cold room, I knew beautiful things would grow. It’s a time of constructing and deconstructing together. We eagerly transformed our lives into words that are higher than life itself—occasionally elegantly lower than life too. I encountered poets who quickly became my all-time favorites: Alice Notley, Dean Young, and Anne Carson, just to name a few. Their words strike me in similar ways, sharp and raw and beautiful and but never apathetic. No, never apathetic. They led me onto a path that diverged from the custom of classical Chinese poetry as I went astray from the traditional imageries that tend to become weighty and higher purposes that tend to stiffen. I never knew poems could be of so much acute sentiment and fierce individuality. 

 At that point, poetry to me was merely a possibility of leaving a permanent mark of memories, but also infinite mysteries for the whole world: it became my secret against the whole universe, full of my face blushing and my body disappearing, just as trash cans rolling up the hill on a rainy afternoon. It’s like bears scratching their back on the trees—leaving an apparent but occult trace. But when the annoying winter blows of the North Atlantic Ocean whipped through, the clouds pressed in, my near-parched mood for diction subsided, and I couldn’t possibly swim until the waters of expression turned blue. Everything was flattened, and I seemed to drown in the realm of words. I knew I had to slow down. Reluctantly, I let go of stacking syllables into complex and often defensive words and hoped to comprehend the way of elimination. The ultimate purpose of the “scratch”—the sense of wiping out explosive imageries and overly intimate diction—arose before me, and yet I couldn’t distinctly comprehend it. It is such a simple logic—less is more—but I won’t be able to succeed on my own.

So I started writing with others, and over time, that “scratch” has broadened and lingered with me. It has come to mean not just writing, but revision, collaboration, and patience, and all the quiet work before something miraculous occurs. Each issue of this newspaper feels like that, too: a chorus of voices linked together by curiosity, humor, and care.

When the winds outside turn sharp and winter presses in, we sometimes lose sight of that spark. Deadlines pile up, pages blur, and words stop coming. But just as language wanders like “weird fishes in a glass tank,” occasionally bumping into each other to make unexpected music, we find new energy in one another’s lines. That is what a community of writers and thinkers does. It turns chaos into rhythm.

I hope you’ll read these pieces not for polish but for pulse, for the ways they reach, falter, and reach again. Each article, artwork, photograph, and even crossword puzzle in these pages is a kind of “scratch” against silence.