ABSTRACT
Pen name of Chen Wan-fen. A precocious child, Lan Ling published her first poem in a prestigious magazine when she was only eleven years old. Her first book of poems, The Fourteenth Starlight, was published in 1961. This was followed by other collected poems that include The Dewy Road in 1964 and The Answering Branches in 1973. Her early poetry has been said to be much influenced by Western modernist poetry, especially the Symbolist poetry that has been blamed for the obscurity and at times awkward Westernized sentence structure in some of her early works. However, critics had also praised her adroit use of Western techniques in her later works. Her poems have also been admired for their classicism, femininity, and profundity. The poet now lives with her family in Ohio. Direction lift tomorrow's lamp to the wintry cold of night's remaining ashes. In the warmth of the charcoal's body the night lurks.
