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confusion and loss of direction experienced by the poet-narrator within the confines of an empty and
immense frontier.
Furthermore, even when a specific cardinal point is introduced at the end of the poem, the
western coordinate of Anxi, it is a west that is beyond the third line's terrestrial and celestial limits (di
jin tian hai jin 地 尽 天 还 尽 ), a notion of west which when read back against the third line seems
somewhat supernatural for having apparently surpassed the furthest threshold of the earth and sky. The
poem thus ends with space hemorrhaging at its limit, cut by a westward direction towards Anxi that
mutilates the bounds of normal topography with a distance beyond distance.
The aim of this subsection was to demonstrate how the spatial coordinates of the poet-narrators'
perceptions in several of Cen Shen's frontier poems not only indicate the direction of perception but
also augment the poet-narrators' feelings of homesickness, separation and geographical confusion. The
first two spatial coordinates examined, eastward and westward, tended to convey the poet-narrator's
sense of separation from home and longing; the third spatial coordinate, that of gazing from all
directions or gazing at the limit of perception's threshold, intensified the poet-narrator's feeling of being
lost and far from home. The following subsection will also address an aspect of the poet-narrator as
focalizer of the frontier landscape of distance, namely that of how the effects of a homesick
psychological state transforms existents of the frontier setting into vehicles which through the poetnarrator's
eyes are focalized as possible bridges that can temporarily overcome the physical divide
between the poet-narrator's spatial position on the frontier and home.
6.1.2. Overcoming Distance Within the Frontier Setting
Although characterized at times by intense cold and heat, the incredible distances comprising
Cen Shen's frontier terrain, distances that echo the poet-narrator's own feeling of separation and