Poems (edition 1976)

Practically all of the earlier cluster of Mao’s poems are in ci forms; most of the later ones are shi. The common opinion, which seems to me correct, is that the earlier poems are better overall. To revert, perhaps not altogether fairly, to that catch-phrase: Mao was better at filling in than he was at writing.

The few examples of ci in the later cluster show Mao at his poetic best. His 1957 poem “The Gods,” the last he ever wrote (or at any rate published) in a ci style, is at the summit, proof that even a mediocre artist can create something halfway memorable. . . .

Putting down this book of poems, I pick up the latest issue of China Journal, a very useful twice-yearly compendium of China scholarship published by Australian National University. Page 142 discusses some village records from south China in the 1950s: “At this meeting two peasants expressed opposition to the new grain procurement system, saying that they wanted more food for their ducks. They were both sent to labor camps in Heilongjiang [in Chinese Siberia] for 15 years.”

Food for their ducks! Fifteen years! Mao Tse-tung was not much of a poet. If he had been the greatest that ever lived, though, it would still have been better for his countrymen, and for the world at large, if he had been strangled in his cradle.