Wind, Tree, Sea: Guo Jie’s Lyric Ethics of Time, Nature, and Inner Distance

Abstract

This essay examines the lyric poetry of Guo Jie (郭杰)—a prominent Chinese poet and scholar—through the lens of ethical attention, temporal consciousness, and non-instrumental engagement with nature. Situating his work at the intersection of scholarship and lyric creation, the essay argues that Guo Jie exemplifies a mature form of the contemporary “scholar–poet,” whose poetry is shaped by historical patience rather than academic display. Through close reading of three representative poems—“The Wind, at Times, Is Lonely”, “Ode to an Ancient Tree”, and “My Heart Has Flown to the Sea”—presented in bilingual Chinese–English form, the essay explores how wind, tree, and sea function not as metaphors subordinated to human emotion, but as ethical interlocutors that resist possession and demand attentiveness. Time in these poems operates as an ethical medium, emphasizing endurance, waiting, and inward distance over resolution or climax. By foregrounding listening over statement and restraint over expressiveness, Guo Jie’s poetry offers a quiet corrective to both academic over-explanation and lyric excess. This essay positions his work within contemporary Chinese poetry while situating it in dialogue with international concerns related to ecological lyricism, ethical minimalism, and the responsibilities of poetic attention.