Near me lives the woman of Luoyang, who looks

only fifteen

Her husband rides a piebald horse with a jade bridle.

Her maid serves minced carp on gold platters.

​

Facing each other are many painted chambers

and crimson towers.

Red peach and green willow trees bend along the eaves. Gauze curtains shield her as she walks to her carriage

of seven fragrances.

Precious fans welcome her back to her nine-flower

canopied bed.

​

Her bold husband is rich, high-born and young

with more mad pride and extravagance than Ji Lun.

He loves his White Jade, teachers her to dance,

and thinks nothing of showering her with handsome

corals.

 

Sun is quenched in the spring window.  The lamp of nine

subtleties flames.

Flakes of nine subtleties drift down like petals.

After entertainment, she forgets to practice music.

She makes up and sits numb in clouds of her own fragrance.

​

She knows all the rich people in the city

and is always at their homes.

But who pites a girl from Yue, beautiful as jade,

poor and washing silk by the river, alone?

​

​

Turning to the poet Yu Hsuan-Chi (Yu Xuanji), here are two translations of her poem:

​

ON A VISIT TO CH’UNG CHEN TAOIST TEMPLE I SEE IN THE SOUTH HALL THE LIST OF SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATES IN THE IMPERIAL EXAMINATION

​

Cloud capped peaks fill the eyes

In the spring sunshine.

Their names are written in beautiful characters

And posted in order of merit.

How I hate this silk dress

That conceals a poet. 

I lift my head and read their names

In powerless envy. 

​

Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung, trans., Women Poets of China (New York:  New Directions, 1973) 19. 

​

Another translation: 

 

Visiting the South Pavilion at Chongzhen

Temple Where The Civil Service Exam Results

Are Posted

​

Cloudy mountains fill my gaze–

I think they enjoy the spring

​

under skillful fingers 

great calligraphy is born

​

I wish my woman’s clothing

didn’t obscure my poems

​

raising my head in vain

admiring the names on the honor rolls.

​

Translated by David Young and Jiann L. Lin in their volume The Clouds Float North, The Complete Poems of Yu Xuanji,(Middletown: Wesleyan U. Press,  1998) (bilingual edition) 23.  Reprinted online by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

 

My song:

​

Of all my songs, this may be the most political and complex. I mold my song  from two poems: Wang Wei’s The Peerless Lady (sometimes titled A Song of a Girl from Loyang) and Yu Hsuan-Chi’s On A Visit to Ch’ung Taoist Temple I See In the South Hall The List of Successful Candidates in the Imperial Examination.   

 

Wang Wei (c699-761) does indeed describe a trophy wife who has made a rags-to-riches rise to the top of the local social pyramid. She married a rich guy, and  hosts fancy parties in a gorgeous house; who would know that she used to be a poor girl washing clothes in the river? 

 

Yu Hsuan-Chi (or Yu Xuanji; c840-868 ) brings an important woman’s voice.  During the Tang, social roles and expectations restricted women from the full expression of their talents.  In Yu’s poem, she is sighing at the wall of honor naming  the successful poet/scholars who passed that year’s imperial examination, their first step on a prestigious career.   As a woman, she could not sit for the examination, though she knew that her poetry (a central component of the exam) was as good as the men’s.

 

My song sketches a  woman negotiating a world of  changing restrictions, opportunities, and expectations.  She’s the trophy wife who never pursued her own dreams.   She’s smart, she’s creative, she’s a poet with a deep inner life.   A rich husband lifts this woman from her working class background (where her academic bent was never nurtured).    She’s older, with kids.  Her McMansion seems a hollow shell despite its big rooms and fancy objects.   

 

Times have changed, but will that help her?  Society is more open to working women, now, but the arts are still not valued:   With effort, still against the odds, women can succeed professionally, but success is measured by the yardstick of Wall Street.  As an intellectual, she still feels isolated. Society would respect her salary, not her poetry.  There is no easy path through her midlife crisis.

 

This song is not about any actual individual,  but thoughts of several people had a subliminal influence.   My  vocal coach Shawna has in her teaching studio a trophy from her days as a pageant contestant. My mother,  a brilliant English scholar (BA, Radcliffe; MA Case Western Reserve University), spent  the expected years at home to raise her children and then encountered resistance as an older woman pursuing a PhD and  teaching career.   My sister-in-law (a lawyer who  chose to remain home raising her children) considered going back to school for an MBA after her divorce. More generally,  I reflected on the attraction of business degrees over humanities for today’s college students.

 

So, in the song:  a women  frustrated both by changing social expectations, and by a society that may not in any event value her true talents.    More broadly, beyond the gender politics, I picture anyone who achieves ‘success’ by some societal standard and then wonders if they’ve really made a meaningful use of their best talents.  A life half full or half empty?   Or just life.

 

Musical inspiration: The musical style has a more contemporary feel than the other songs, which suits me since I think the song’s theme is also more contemporary.   More piano, more pop, less country twang.  Would Mary Chapin Carpenter record this song?  It might suit her.