Yang Guifei and Sally Wen Mao's New Poetry Collection

紅顏禍水 A femme fatale

A friend on Facebook has been talking and raving about Sally Wen Mao’s new poetry collection The Kingdom of Surfaces. In the book, linked poems start a long conversation with readers about beauty, empire, commodification, and violence.

I read poetry very, very slowly… there was one, however, that quickly caught my eye:

The Romance of the Castle-Toppler

红颜祸水
red face, troubled water
a dangerous beauty who rains ruin upon the nation

Have you ever heard of that expression?

In Japanese:

紅顏禍水

charming beauty who makes men fall and leads to disasters (such as a loss of wealth or reputation, or a toppled nation); dangerous woman; femme fatale

Wen Mao writes:

The castle-toppler is one word for a woman

or more literally: a kingdom-destroying concubine

n. woman who brings about the downfall of an empire
v. to cause a city or state’s collapse

in Chinese she is qingcheng, in Japanese she is kisei

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It’s a spectacular poem—scroll down to see it here. ( I listened)

In the flesh, she is dead and has been dead for some time. Her bones give away to mycelium
kingdoms. Wildflowers cover her limbs. Heather and heart’s ease. Mushrooms feast on her body,
worms feast on the fungus, birds feast on the worms.

And when the dawn arrives and the foxes find the birds, breaking their necks, the woman has
already been buried deep inside another instrument of hollow bones.

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In Japan, the only castle-topper that comes to mind is Tang dynasty’s Yang Guifei—evoked at the very beginning of the Genji, when Genji’s father fell madly and dangerously in love with Genji’s mother. An obsessive passion so great that it threatened to become a serious problem at court—just like what happened with Yang Guifei, says Murasaki Shikibu.

The poet is teasing people like me who romanticize history.

About the kanji

紅顏: literally: rosy face. A beautiful woman with a pretty face

禍水 Troubled waters

Thinking of other femme fatale…hmmmm, why can’t I think of any castle topplers apart from the four historic beauties of China?

Wen Mao sings:

If beauty signaled so much power, why did four out of four historical beauties die tragically? Xi Shi, rumored to drown in a lake, where the fish drowned in their awe of her. Yang Guifei strangled to death in front of a Buddhist shrine. Bao Si, hung herself during a siege. Zhao Feiyan killed herself while tomb-sweeping. Daji, executed by the state.

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Art at top by Ah Xian.

Next time, news about Bread Loaf…