Meng Chiao

Jessica Garcia

Hinton, Mountain Home, Meng Chiao, Laments of the Gorges 142-149

Meng Chiao is a poet that lived a while in the south of china but later moved to the north where he established himself there. Hinton describes Meng Chiao as “the founder of an experimental movement that defined the mid-T’ang as a unique period in Chinese poetry” (pg 147). His techniques and the way he expresses his love for nature makes unique. He tries to relate to nature and feel the way it might be feeling and how nature might react to change; the way that he writes especially in Laments of the Gorges makes us picture what he is or might b looking at. Meng Chiao uses some of the five senses in this poem which are smell, hearing, and sight. By smell I mean the way he says that tree roots smell “rotten”. This part for me is an important part because he is engaging the reader. Also hearing is said when he writes “thousand of cascading thongs of water”. We can hear all those waterfalls and imagine how beautiful they are. By the end of the poem those waterfalls are just “water-ghosts”. The sense of sight is through out the poem for example,”dark”, “cascading thongs of water”, etc.

“One thread of heaven over ten thousand cascading thongs of water… offer tears to mourn the water-ghost and water-ghosts take them, glimmering” (pg 143).

These lines resume the poem. Laments of the gorges, a sad poem in which Meng Chiao expresses his concern toward the nature. The gorge was a very beautiful place that has recently been faded away as he calls it “water-ghosts”.

Finally this poem is a very sad poem at the end because what it was before is not longer there. All the beautiful waterfalls are not longer waterfall but only just an image in the mind of what used to be. Meng Chiao sadness was that one part of nature was disappearing and it was becoming a ghost.