Broken Uterus

By Cai Gentan

"They just squat and occupy it. Even when they are sick, they still want to occupy something."

Broken Uterus is a collection of poems by Cai Gentan, one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary Chinese poetry. Comprising five distinct chapters focusing on sexual relationships, Chinese history, hospital life, and m

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terror House Press, LLC
• Release date: Feb 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781951897369

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Praise for Broken Uterus

"This is a fascinating collection. Broken Uterus manages to be melancholy, beautifully sublime, wickedly irreverent, and wildly entertaining all at the same time. It pays dutiful homage to the ambiguous spirit of an ancient land while injecting the element of brutal slapstick that has characterized China for the past 71 years." — Ted Prokash, Joyless House Publishing

Cai Gentan is different in the contemporary Chinese poetry world. His poems have the characteristics of colloquialism, reaching directly the social reality and the chronic illness of flesh and soul. The words, images, and cruel poetic meanings in his poems often make people tremble. In this collection, the group-poem ‘Hainan Hospital’ is an important in-depth image and metaphoric commonality concerning the times, society, and soul. His writing is critical of reality and has the characteristic of ‘being on the scene’ as mentioned in poetry discussions. Through his unique language and writing style, he shows the darkness and ambiguity in politics, humanity, and the soul. His greatest contribution is that he’s constructed the earliest diseased narrative (疾病叙事) of Chinese poetics in the 21st century. — Jiang Xue (江雪)

Cai Gentan is a great contemporary Chinese poet that I feel most jealous and sympathetic about. He’s created the atmosphere and realm that me and my generation want but failed to create. He is a genius who is ignored by us. In an epoch when pathologicalism is everywhere, Cai Gentan’s viewpoint that normality is pathological, pathologicalism is normal reaches the hidden corner of human existence, and has great exploratory significance. Cai Gentan reminds me of Derek Walcott in his early days. They all grow and live on remote islands that are faraway from the mainstream of discourse, but they both have world-class poetic minds and visions and use words to quietly and acutely present human desires and predicaments. — Ren Yihao (任意好)

Copyright © 2021 Terror House Press, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-951897-36-9

EDITOR

Matt Forney (mattforney.com)

TRANSLATOR

Xi Nan (xifish.wordpress.com)

LAYOUT AND COVER DESIGN

Matt Lawrence (mattlawrence.net)

Excerpts of this book were published, in somewhat different form, by Terror House Magazine. The author would like to thank Terror House for their support.

TERROR HOUSE PRESS, LLC

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Table of Contents

Translator’s Introduction by Xi Nan

Chapter 1: Stow Away to Cuba

Chapter 2: Physical Relations

Chapter 3: Berlin Tunnel

Chapter 4: Lost at 40

Chapter 5: The Daydream of a Hainan Patient

Postscript Poem: I Thought the Sky Was Full of Stars

Translator’s Introduction

by Xi Nan

Cai Gentan (蔡根谈) is an important poet in contemporary China and one of the first poets who wrote on the Internet. Back in the early 2000’s, Cai Gentan was already famous in the online poetry BBS at the time under his pen name Flower Gun (花枪). According to Gentan, Flower Gun was the very first pen name he’d ever had and it came from the name of a band he liked at university: Guns n’ Roses. This pen name fits well with the salient features of his writing at the time: vigorous, sharp. Some works in this book, such as Alphabet Era, were completed in that period of time.

In January 2006, Gentan returned from inland China to his hometown on Hainan Island and lived in the dormitory of a hospital. Here, he had the opportunity to observe and interact with a large number of patients and began to focus on the major problem facing human beings: diseases. He realized that human history is the history of patients. On June 6th of the same year, he published the Declaration of Pathologicalism (病态主义宣言), which put forward the viewpoint that normality is pathological, pathologicalism is normal and the three principles of pathological, fundamental, and liberating (病态、底性、解放), as well as initiated and advocated for the pathological writing style (病态主义写作). During this period, Gentan completed the writing of his long group poems Hainan Hospital. It was these group poems that won him the very first poetry award in his life: the Yuding Poetry Award (御鼎诗歌奖).

When we talk about the relationship between writing and life, Gentan says that between his life and writing, there is a suitable distance. The roads one travels, the books one reads, the people and experiences one meets all determine what kind of person they become, and they