DEAD WATER BY WU YI-TUO

The poem was written by the Chinese poet Wen Yi-Tuo. He was a patriotic poet and fighter. In 1922, Wen Yi-Tuo went to the USA to study in order to use his knowledge to serve China. However, on the foreign land, the poet suffered all kinds of hardships such as discrimination for being Chinese. He, later on, went back to China only to see the cruel exploitation of tangled warfare among warlords, imperialism, and China has become comparable to a dead water. So through these deep emotions upon his country, he was able to make this poem.

At first look or read, I can really admit that it is really hard to interpret and understand. The main idea was really hard to find. Readers may have a difficulty of reading this translated poem and they may have confusion in their minds. But if a reader will read it thoroughly, we can really feel the empathy and the defined emotion in it. Readers may take a lot of tries in reading just to fully understand the poem and this may result in different conclusions.

As for the structure of the poem, it is written in five stanzas and each stanza consists of four lines or sentences. the words used was formal. There were also no rhymes written on it and it totally shows that the author wrote it in a free typed form. It uses deep words or symbolism for describing people. It also uses some figurative languages such as exaggeration and metaphor.

Upon understanding the poem, I can say that it talks about unprivileged people. From the title itself, it surely talks about the country is no longer alive. Poor people can’t stand in society via their own. The poet described the poem as dead water by means that there is this ugly water that is unacceptable for those who may across it. There is a discrimination towards unwealthy people and there is no special treatment for them. In this poem, the author seems to be suggesting that a country will never ever cultivate good deeds if they continue to get rid of poor people.