That hungry machine, every day eating iron, blueprints
stars, dew, salty sweat, it picks its teeth
and spits out profit, bank notes, nightclubs . . . it sees lopped-off fingers
unpaid wages, shadowy occupational diseases, and the memories are bitter
(from “Machine,” page 7)
The writings of Xiaoquiong Zheng are emblematic of a 21st century industrial and post-industrial society. The poet emerges from the viscera of the machine, having observed severed fingers, endless noise, and the stripped spirits of the workers, to find glimpses of the beautiful and gather the courage to express lifestyles of horror and brutality.
Zheng’s work is a disruption. It is overtly energized, superpowered by the culture of work that is spread across entire communities, a suffocating blanket. The poet in this book is carrying the static aftermath of the factories and warehouses observed in southern China. The speaker attacks the senses, moving between sight, smell, sound, touch from line to line, stanza to stanza.
I speak this sharp-edged, oiled language
of cast iron—the language of silent workers
a language of tightened screws the crimping and memories of iron sheets
a language like calluses fierce crying unlucky
hurting hungry language back pay of the machines’ roar
(from “Language,” page 41)
These poems are crisp and dense, an onslaught on the reader, showcasing what it is to be, what it is to suffer, and what it is to exist through the consequences of industry. The linear movement from start to finish is choking, filled with the phantasmagoria of industrial life. Line after line is shock and awe, and the result is a subtle numbness.
In the Roar of the Machine is one of the most compelling books of labor-based writing I have read, a haunting glimpse of one in conjunction with many. Zheng is a poet whose writing is truly representative. In the book’s opening section, “Huangmaling,” the poet feels allegorical, an aspect rather than a single individual, who absorbs the environs and characters of the everyday and channels those images and events into lines and stanzas. Later, in “Woman Worker,” this amorphous and ambiguous human condition is given a kaleidoscopic arrangement of human portraits; Zheng explores the world through the frames of the many women who fill these factories and conduct the work.
the future is exchanged for credit the past doesn’t have time to swipe its card
you go to the disco without a backwards glance everything at high speed
(from “Zhang Ai,” page 57)
This is a collection that forces a spotlight on the juxtapositions and contradictions of contemporary China. Zheng wants the reader to know, to remember, there is a softness and frailty to humanity beneath the endless sheets of iron, the endless poundings and punchings and drillings of tools, the excessive repetitions and relentless consuming of production. For the West, for the English readers that have been given this gift of a collection, we are also provided with spotlights on the individuals of China, a place whose population is so often anonymized, overlooked, or intentionally ignored.
Eleanor Goodman, the translator, has done a fantastic job of including very readable verse that also captivates and embraces the incredible sensory aspects of Zheng’s poetics. The collection features works from Zheng that span over a decade (2006 to after 2016), and while the collection feels complete and consistent from cover to cover, the nuances between each of the book’s five sections are distinct.
And the tears, the joy, the pain we’ve had
our glorious or petty thoughts, and our souls
are all illuminated by the moonlight, collected, and carried afar
hidden in rays of light no one will notice
(from “Industrial Zone,” page 10)
Zheng is a complex poet whose resistant and descriptive works are rooted in a very intense, centered context, while also branching subtly across tone and subject matter. Each section moves forward in the poet’s life and illuminates new interests, new elements of voice, and a push toward the resolution of age and exhaustion. And yet it is barbed with the reality that the machine does not cease when illuminated, and that individuality is second to the masses, even when the machine’s workings are atrocious and destructive. Zheng does not hide from this; her work does not let up. It is haunted, plagued by these pressures and it asks us to consider how we may sit with the challenge of the system as we continue to breathe its air.
Greg Bem lived in Seattle for 13 years before moving to Spokane, where he has resided since 2023. He is a community college librarian and union organizer, small press publisher, poet and performer, and book reviewer, among other things. His reviews are linked on his website, and can be found published here in International Examiner as well as in Rain Taxi, North of Oxford, Exacting Clam, and Another Chicago Magazine.
