The Nanjing Massacre: Poems
The subject is the notorious Japanese occupation of Nanjing, China, in 1937. Wing Tek Lum's poems capture all perspectives of the tragedy—from the weary, casually cruel Japanese soldiers to the uncomprehending child victims, and from the desperate helpless parents and the brutalized "comfort women" to the bloodless yet vicious bureaucrats of death.
The Nanjing Massacre is a striking volume of poetry. The poems, intelligent and at times brutal, provide both kaleidoscopic slices and a vast panorama of the tragedy. The magnitude of the poetic vision and effort is simply overwhelming.”—Ha Jin “History is not poetry and of course poetry is never history—and yet, Wing Tek Lum has fused the two with skill, sensitivity and fury. This brilliant collection, based on documents, avoids agenda, although Lum is necessarily partisan in addressing a massacre that others prefer to forget. By way of his poems, he invigorates dry record. For those who have a bias against ‘political poetry,’ this collection will crack preconceived notions. Lu is unflinching in his art.”—Kimiko Hahn
Anyone who tries to deny the massacre will not be allowed by history, the souls of the 300,000 deceased victims, 1.3 billion Chinese people and all people loving peace and justice in the world.
The Nanjing massacre has been the subject of numerous books over the past decade and a half, adding massively to our understanding of what happened. In their search for the truth, historians have left no stone unturned and have created thick, fact-filled works.
In some cases, however, the truth is so horrific that it can only be hinted at, observed from an oblique angle so to speak, through poetry. It is for this reason that Wing Tek Lum’s book of poems is not only the most eloquent addition yet to the growing library of horrors that constitute Nanjing literature but also one of the most important.
The poetry of Wing Tek Lum uses a variety of poetic genres, even haiku-inspired verse, whose concise form makes every word fraught with meaning. The author takes a variety of perspectives, including those of soldiers, civilians, and even a river filled with bodies.
Though the book takes place in a particular place at an awful time, it is a general indictment of humanity at its worst, as well as at its best. He explicitly shows, in Rapes, that the events of Nanjing in 1937 were repeated in Berlin in 1945, Congo in 1960, Bosnia in 1992, and Rwanda in 1994.
War is treated almost metaphysically in the Iliad as both a historical event and a metaphor for war 3,000 years ago. In much the same way, Wing Tek Lum’s book deals with both a massacre that occurred in China more than 75 years ago and genocides worldwide.