Traces of Rilke are unearthed in Lo Fu's long poem sequence,
Driftwood, along with his affection for surrealism and the early
modernists such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire and the more
contemporary verse of Wallace Stevens. On New Year's Day 2001, the poem
appeared in the literary supplement to the Liberty Times in Taiwan and
was serialized for three months straight. Lo Fu has won almost every
literary award in Taiwan and has published more than three dozen volumes
of poetry, essays, criticism and translations. Despite his prolific
output, Lo Fu considers Driftwood to be the book that sums up his
experience of exile, his artistic explorations and his metaphysics;
Driftwood is a personal epic and the greatest achievement of his old
age.
Lo Fu is the pen name of Mo Luofu, who was born in Hengyang, Hunan
Province, in 1928. He joined the military during the Sino-Japanese War
(1937-1945) and moved to Taiwan in 1949. While stationed in southern
Taiwan in 1954, he founded the Epoch Poetry Society with Zhang Mo and Ya
Xian, serving as the editor of the Epoch Poetry Quarterly for more
than a decade. He immigrated to Vancouver in 1996, where he still lives.
John Balcom has published more than a dozen books into English from
Chinese. He is associate professor and Chinese program head at the
Monterey Institute. Balcom previously collaborated with Lo Fu on the
translation of his book of poetry Death of a Stone Cell (Taoran
Press).
