A Maze of Stars and Spring Water

Book excerpt: A Maze of Stars & Spring Water is a collection of poems directly inspired by the poetic forms that emerged after the May Fourth Movement. Specifically, the “mini poem,” which by Bing Xin’s own admission, hadn’t quite existed before she started experimenting with its form. Inspired by Tagore’s Stray Birds, she started gathering her “scattered and fragmentary thoughts,” not originally intended as poetry, but which would eventually become the present collection. The popularity of the poems and the distinction of the form led the genre to become known as the “Bingxin style.”