Geometry of Expansion: Scrolls, Folds, and Concentric Shapes in Contemporary American and Chinese Long Poems

Geometry of Expansion: Scrolls, Folds, and Concentric Shapes in Contemporary American and Chinese Long Poems treats recursive geometry as an analytic framework to study material, thematic, rhythmic, and epistemological innovations in recent long poems. Each chapter compares a book-length American poem with a Chinese counterpart, with the poems selected for their shared formal designs––the unwinding scroll, the self-embedding and self-duplicating folds, and the concentric squares and circles. The interest in recursive geometry, emerging in parallel in these two disparate literary traditions, situates the long poem within the tension between epic and lyric poetry, reconfigures many classic poetic concepts, and transforms the genre of the long poem into a tentative, piecemeal, yet committed engagement with contemporary reality. I further propose that the mathematical interpretation of these recursive shapes lends us critical vocabularies and insights, with which we can describe the poiesis of recent experimental works and conceive a hermeneutics not only for these specific poems but also for contemporary experience in general. The introduction traces the evolution of the modern long poem into a hybrid, porous, and attractive genre epitomizing the interplay between epic and lyric, formal constraints and artistic ingenuity, as well as nationalism and globalization. Drawing from the interdisciplinary applications of recursivity, I discuss why scrolls, folds, and concentric shapes appeal to many poets as the structure to uncover and overcome materialism, commercialism, alienation, and political repression. The first chapter examines two poems written on scrolls—Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965) by A. R. Ammons and Following Huang Gongwang in Touring the Fuchun Mountains (2015) by Zhai Yongming. I discuss how the scroll's kinematic features enable the poets to transform an attention economy characterized by stimulations and incessant distractions into a sustainable commitment. The second chapter focuses on two elegies––The Midnight (2003) by Susan Howe and An Ideal Couple in the Water-Paint Garden: Mao Pijiang and Dong Xiaowan 1642––1651 (2019) by Bai Hua. Their rapid shifts in forms and themes reveal bifurcating, layered, and fractal patterns, which diffuse lyric sources and redemptions in everyday life. The last chapter concerns two family romances written in concentric shapes––Lyn Hejinian's My Life (1980) and Yang Lian's Narrative Poems (2011). I argue that these poems organize familial and cultural memories centripetally and centrifugally to envision how a decentered poetic subjectivity is still capable of social effects.