Introduction

In July 2007, scholars descended upon Wuhan, Hubei province, for an international conference dedicated to scholarship on American modernist and contemporary poets.1 Significantly, the great majority of attendees were Chinese scholars and students eager to bring their English-language research on American and American-based poets and poetry (ranging from Langston Hughes to Elizabeth Bishop, from W. H. Auden to Allen Ginsberg) into dialogue with their international peers. The initial aim and audience of the present volume correspond to those of the 2007 conference: not only to document the best of such research—on how American modernist poetry has been received and analyzed by Chinese commentators—but also, equally, to engage bilaterally (via the English language) with the already well-established field and scholarship on American poetry elsewhere. As such, American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter is both product and symptom of the rapidly developing landscape for the scholarship and study of American poetry as the Chinese tertiary education sector advances. At a time of perceived decline in marketability—and funding—for literary study in the West, the popular appreciation of American modern and contemporary poetry by Chinese students and scholars is growing.