'The Kingsbury Tales: the Argument', with a commentary by Steve Brock

By Ouyang Yu

 


欧阳自评：十多年前写于我在武大教书期间，后来发表在新西兰的Landfall杂志。到现在还记得大清早两个吵架的夫妻之中的夫说：我怕你！我怕你！用的是武汉话，谢谢值班


Steven, who's on smashing duty today, has made very perceptive comments on the poem, as follows,


Special commentary on No.4 ('The Kingsbury Tales: the Argument'):


I like the mix of public and private spaces in this poem as the argument spills out into a courtroom in the poet's imaginaiton. Furthermore, the overheard conversation is amplified from the intimate domestic battle across countries and jurisdictions. The lines of dialogue are dramatic and cutting. It ends with the subject peeking out between the curtains, a subtle commentary on film and poetry, which positions us all as voyeurs, and invests the poem with a metanarrative. This is a dialogic poem that doesn't try too hard, like a couple of joggers running past a wall, casually opening up different gender and cultural perspectives on the complex issue of domestic violence in the contested space of the private and public realms.

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