Gu, Cheng

Gu Cheng traces his first reading of Whitman to his adolescence in the 1960s, but he claimed that the dynamic impact of Leaves of grass never really hit him until 1983, when he was in search of a new poetics.
"Eager to unveil the page of heart
But I happened to pen
Selected poems from Leaves of Grass
With the shadow of the eupatorium
Shading a live-oak."

Gu Cheng : Interview with a Hong Kong poet.
"Whitman is transcendental ; he manages to have straight access to the ontological being. I first read Whitman's poems at an early age but got reawakened much later. I was a curbed person. It was not until one morning in 1983 that the electricity of my anguish dissolved my skin, which had been as stiff as lead, and as a result I came to perceive the great ontological being - Whitman. His sound came down vertically from the air, blowing on me and shaking my every hour and minute. The century between us no longer exists ; nor does the Pacific Ocean, leaving Whitman himself – the visible but untouchable 'I' and himself only – the eternity that was getting nearer and clearer. I was stunned, almost desirous to throw myself away and give up my work grinding flowers on the glass of images. I was shaken again and again, lying there and feeling like a wooden piece in a piano. From morning to evening I was just listening to the sound of the falling raindrops. On that day I ate nothing."

Bei, Dao ; Gu, Cheng. Beidao yu Gu Cheng shi xuan : stranden och det bortskamda barnet : dikter. I tolkning av Göran Malmqvist. (Höganäs : Wiken, 1983). [Übersetzung ausgewählter Gedichte in Chinesisch und Schwedisch].
北岛与顾城诗选

Gu, Cheng ; Lei, Mi. Ying'er : the kingdom of daughters. Aus dem Chinesischen von Li Xia ; mit einem Nachwort von Marián Gálik. (Dortmund : Projekt-Verlag, 1995). (Ed. Cathay ; Bd. 9). Übersetzung von Gu, Cheng ; Lei, Mi. Ying'er. (Beijing : Zuo jia chu ban she, 1993).
英儿

Gu, Cheng. Essays, interviews, recollections and unpublished material of Gu Cheng, the 20th century Chinese poet : the poetics of death. Ed. with an introd. and transl. by Li Xia. (Lewiston : Edwin Mellen Press, 1999). (Chinese studies ; vol. 5).