Landscape essays
In 1983, Yang returned to National Taiwan University as a visiting professor, and he contributed a weekly column to the United Daily News titled "Interchange." The following year, he reflected upon a letter from a reader on a drive south to Taichung, and that night he wrote his first "letter to a young poet." Over the next four years he would write 18 such epistolary essays, which would be collected in Finishing a Poem. These discussed the meaning and methods of poetry and analyzed poems' form and content. He also described what he regarded as an ideal poem:
"Poems are without any goal. They travel beyond any social purpose, floating beyond the pursuits of people. But the poet, sharp like the cold tip of a sword, often realizes himself in the joys or sorrows of what he hears and sees himself, clarifying what is false and hypocritical, hacking through debased sophistry, getting rid of all the foolish details. In a confined space, poems expand boundlessly, leading you to the truth."
Over the course of a decade beginning in 1987, Yang Mu completed his masterpiece of personal essay writing: Chilai, the Prequel, which was constructed from three separate books: Mountain Winds, Sea Rains, Direction Returns to Zero, and The Old Me Is Gone. The work accurately records his early childhood, his days of development and searching as a student, and then his grabbing hold of what he ultimately wanted to do with his life: writing poetry. Describing the landscape of Hualien, the work served as a model for Taiwanese "landscape essays" and "geographical literature."
In 1996 Yang Mu finally returned to his hometown of Hualien, where he served as the first head of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at National Dong Hwa University. There, at the suggestion of Wu Chien-cheng, director of the foreign languages department, and Professor Tseng Chen-chen, he established a Graduate Institute of Creative Writing and English Literature, the first of its kind in Taiwan. In place of master's theses, students produce creative manuscripts. And he founded a "writer-in-residence" program. Each year a different writer comes to the school to teach classes.
In 2000 Yang Mu won a National Award for Arts, and the following year he left Dong Hwa to become the director of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at the Academia Sinica. After retiring in 2006, he returned to teaching, alternating between Dong Hwa and the University of Washington.
Yang Mu never stopped writing. Over his career as a professor and creative writer spanning half a century, he has produced some 40 or 50 works in all. These include poetry, drama in verse, essays, translations, criticism and anthologies of famous works. His work combines the poet's sensitive and melancholic aesthetic and the social critic's incisive, self-reflective style. His work's impact on Taiwanese literature runs wide and deep.
Although his life includes his wife Hsia Ying-ying and a beloved only son, Yang Mu is in the habit of pondering matters alone. "Solitude makes me happy," he says. "I seek out and indulge in solitude as much as possible." How many opportunities does one person have in one lifetime? Solitude leads to reflection, and in reflection one can completely face oneself.
As Yang Mu works in a corner of his study, all one can hear is the rustle of turning pages. The hubbub, bustle and neon exuberance of Taipei are shut outside. The night gradually turns silent....
Yang Mu's poetry collection Water's Brink came out in 1960. Its cover was designed specially by sculptor Yang Ying-feng, who was then editor-in-chief of the Chinese-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction's Harvest fortnightly.
Introspective and intellectually incisive, Yang Mu (right) cherishes solitude as an opportunity for deep reflection. His wife Hsia Ying-ying (center) and his only son (left) make his life whole.
Yang Mu took ten years to write Chilai, the Prequel, a collection of autobiographical early essays that are models of the genres of the geographical and the personal essay.