The All-Seeing Eye

Shang Qin (1930-2010) is widely considered one of the most influential and original modern Chinese poets. His critical acclaim was earned not only as a modern master of the prose poem but also as one of Taiwan's leading surrealist poets. Taiwan in the 1950s saw the beginnings of a broad, eclectic search for new poetic models and varieties of modernism. This gained momentum and progressed through the 1960s, growing into a modernist movement. During this boom period for poetry, some of the leading Chinese poets of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond emerged: Lo Fu, Ya Hsien, and Yang Mu, to name just a few. Shang Qin, also one of the giants of the movement, came to prominence during this period; his first collection of poetry Dream or Dawn, published in 1969, has been hailed as a landmark of Chinese surrealism. The poet Ya Hsien dedicated his poem 'For a Surrealist' to Shang Qin, and the label stuck. Shang Qin always found the surrealist label too restrictive and once