Zhang Zhan: Writing poetry should be a kind of adventure to brave the desperate situation

Zhang Zhan, who teaches at Hunan First Normal College, publishes poetry collections "Black Candy House", "Stranger", "Poems for Human Children", and "Poems of Zhang Zhan". Usually ashamed to call herself a poet, because she has always kept a "doll's head" and her voice is soft and sticky, she is often called "Little Pill Teacher" by her students.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Photo: Li Tingting

"One tree pulls another tree into its arms / Dew falls in clusters / How cool / In a few days the dew will turn into white frost / Like a crushed moon / / Suddenly a bird chirps / Clearly shouts out our loneliness"

These are the last two verses of Zhang Zhan's poem "Clearly ShoutIng Out Our Loneliness" The first two verses of the poem, the farewell, the change in the woods sensed by the fall of a leaf at the end of the path.

Goodbyes and goodbyes happen every day. It happens all the time. The dew turned into white frost, which we could all see. But like the poet Zhang Zhan, there seem to be very few people who see one tree pulling another into their arms.

2021 is coming to an end, this year, what did you say goodbye? What else will you say goodbye to? If you see this poem, please pull the people around you into your arms.

A great white goose from the countryside of Pupu appeared when I was drinking tea with the poet Zhang Zhan. Pupu is Mr. Zhang Zhan's hometown, and in Zhang Zhan's impression, the people in her hometown like to eat geese. What impressed her particularly was that when the people there sold geese in the market, they held the geese in their hands.

"It was like holding a small child. The goose was on a man's shoulder, like a child, sticking its head out, hmmm hmm, looking around curiously, neck whirling around. ”

At this time, Zhang Zhan will follow the goose and the goose seller for a while. When Zhang Zhan described this to me, he came with a "but": "However, I like to eat geese, and goose meat is delicious." ”

Zhang Zhan likes to eat geese, first of all because her mother likes to eat geese, her mother once told her how good goose meat is, so every time she goes to Pupu, Zhang Zhan will go to the market to buy one or more geese to bring back to Changsha, and over time, Zhang Zhan also likes to eat geese.

Zhang Zhan wrote a poem titled "Drinking a Bowl of Goose Soup" for the goose she likes to eat, "I have held a big white goose that grew up eating goose vegetables / It is strong, heavy, snow white / With a warm dusty atmosphere ... When I hold a great white goose, I am like holding a man / I praise it for its beauty and strength", the poem says. In fact, she didn't hold a goose.

"The goose is fierce, the goose is so tall when he stands up." When she loved geese, she was chased around by geese when she was a child. However, she never held a goose, not because she was pecked by a goose as a child, but because she was afraid of touching all the animals that had hair and sudden heartbeats. This fear did not affect her love of the goose, nor did she like to drink goose soup and write the goose into poetry- "but when she drank the goose soup, she still drank the goose soup / The same devout praise of the sweetness of the goose soup / A bowl is so full and empty."

On the evening of December 7, on the shore of Meixi Lake, before Zhang Zhan talked about the big white goose, the first thing she talked about was the swan she had seen in Yueyang Qianliang Lake when she was a child.

Qianliang Lake is the place where Zhang Zhan's father "reformed through labor.". Just as Xu Lingjun in the movie "Wrangler" was given grazing land to be protected by herders, Zhang Zhan's father was also warmed in Qianliang Lake, and everyone called him Officer Zhang. Because my mother had a salary every month, and although my father was reforming, he also had more than a dozen yuan of living expenses every month, and life was not so difficult. Farmers in and around Qianlianghu Farm know that Zhang Zhanjia has "living money" and will even go to the door to sell the migratory birds they have hunted.

Most of the swans that Zhang Zhan saw when she was a child were hunted, and she also saw swans flying in the sky and floating in the water, she felt that swans only looked good when they floated on the surface of the water, and the swans were not good when they stood up or flew up, "It is very heavy below the neck, and it is very stupid to stand up and fly." This was the hazy impression that Swan had left on her as a child. Fortunately, the swans she saw when she grew up were floating in the water.

Her father was a soldier in the field army, and Zhang Zhan, who was born in Chaozhou in the 1960s, went to many places when she was a child because her father often changed defenses. Later, her father's encounter did not leave any shadow in Zhang Zhan's childhood, and she felt that the places she had visited were "all heaven and fun", and she was very happy. For example, she said in Guilin, "Guilin has a lot of osmanthus trees, each osmanthus tree is different, this osmanthus tree has ants, there are very small frogs under the osmanthus tree, when it rains, it can be seen for a long time." Later, when she came to see the wider sky and the earth, qianliang Lake with countless water plants and migratory birds, she felt even more like paradise, "that kind of nature, that kind of unrestrained life." ”

The love of nature, the love of an unrestrained life, later became the indelible background of her poetry when she wrote poetry. The beauty, sorrow and even cruelty of all sentient beings, she placed them in the vast nature, even the deep trauma of human nature, she dealt with it as gracefully and quietly as possible.

dialogue

"I belong to the 'self-buried' style of poets

Being invited to participate in the "Youth Poetry Club" organized by the Poetry Journal is a rare aura for the vast majority of poetry writers. Zhang Zhan got this aura in 1995, and because of her low profile, because of her insistence on "not seeking something other than poetry with poetry", she is still relatively unfamiliar in the poetry world. She enjoyed the strangeness and wrote her own poems in this strange atmosphere.

"I chose to write something bright and warm in poetry"

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: What does poetry and writing poetry mean to you?

Zhang Zhan: This question is so difficult to answer... I think you're probably asking what it means to read poetry and write poetry. I read poems very poorly, not systematically, not seriously, not studying, not learning, I read poems like a child sucking candy, as bitter as dark chocolate, as sour and sweet as plum candy, I suck their taste, let them into the heart, but also often spit them out with a single content.

I read poems that I meet by chance, and when I read a few sentences, I know whether I like them or not, and I don't read them repeatedly in a short period of time, but in a long time, I will often turn back, but I will only read them bit by bit again. I don't think even the best poetry can provide the reader with a systematic thought, a complete reality or a spiritual world, a standard answer to life. But good poetry will present a unique and distinct perspective and posture of observing life, they will surprise you and surprise you. Reading poetry is like looking for a friend, looking for someone who speaks in the tone you like. This person is very different from you, but borrowing his eyes, ears, nose, and tongue, you realize that you can't reach life and world, good poetry is like a microscope, like a drill, like an astronomical telescope, like a painkiller, they help you to open up the height, depth, breadth of life, increase its density or mass, read good poetry, you can see that it presents another more real state of existence or cosmic state.

When I wrote poetry, I became brave, dared to focus on the self that was hiding in the daily life, dared to speak out of my heart, dared to say the more authentic part of myself. Writing poetry should be a desperate adventure, but I was still too timid and I didn't do it well. In any case, in a poetic way, I opened up a part of myself to the public.

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: Just like many directors like to use the same actor or several actors again and again, many painters have materials that he often draws, what do you choose to enter the poem when you write poetry, what you do not choose to enter the poem, is there something that belongs to you?

Zhang Zhan: I don't write about things that are too cruel... I know that in life it exists and is unavoidable, but I choose to write something bright and warm in poetry, even at the end of a poem, especially at the end. I change most of my poems to the end, and I want a poem to have a bright tail at the end and a path to follow.

I don't think it's a cliché, it's a person's truest and final value choice, it's one's most sincere wish. Whether it is poetry, painting or music, it should make people feel that life is worthwhile, that living has meaning, and that the world is worth our struggle to make it better. We need solace and strength.

I don't like a nihilistic attitude to life, and neither does poetry. Seeing through everything, sneering, without action, I don't think this is wisdom, and I don't think it's compassion.

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: In fact, you were already selected for the Youth Poetry Society as early as 1995, but to many poetry readers, you still seem to be a "newcomer". This illustrates at least two issues, one. Your writing does not repeat itself, does not fall into the familiar routine; You don't like to be lively and keep a certain distance from poetry. Is this in your nature, or is it something else?

Zhang Zhan: I am ashamed to take the initiative to make friends, and some poets like to look down on others, I think: he will definitely laugh at me, I am still quiet, better to hide. Now poets seem to have their own circles, and the praise of each other's poetry seems to pay attention to etiquette, I don't like this, but if you don't go, naturally they won't come, and the inevitable result is your namelessness.

Of course, it is also because I write less, I don't write well enough, but also because of my "poetic view" - poetry to poetry, I don't know if this sentence will make people laugh again. I mean, when a poem is written, if it is a good poem, for the author, the process of writing and the result of writing is already the highest reward that poetry can bring you, pleasure, pleasure, satisfaction, release, and even self-affirmation, and that is enough. As for whether a poem can be read by others and what it can bring to others, that is its fate. I took a negative attitude towards the spread of poetry, and more often than not, I let it fend for itself.

I remember teacher Lei Pingyang once said that I belong to the "self-buried" type of poet, if I can call myself a poet. But I also long for someone to read my poems and resonate with them. This is a paradox. I am not extreme, I hope that my poetry drift bottles can be picked up and opened, but I am ashamed to take the initiative to present them, but the main reason is because I think they are not well written.

"Shame guards me and is my first line of defense"

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: In the poem "Shame", you ask if there is anything like you are ashamed every day, every day you want to dig a new hole to hide yourself. Shame as a very precious quality, many people have lost, and you still often feel ashamed, is this also a secret to your "new" state?

Zhang Zhan: I'm really always ashamed of myself, every day! My new collection of poems, "Zhang Zhan's Poems," was called "Shame" when I took the title of the collection of poems, but a teacher I respected very much from Haitian Publishing House changed it for me. He said that it was called "Zhang Zhan's Poem", which was clear and clear at a glance. I said, I was not famous, called "Zhang Zhan's Poems", who will buy it! This book of poems came out, I got it, and for two or three days I put it aside, and I didn't touch it, and I felt that the poem was not well written, which was shameful. However, this teacher of Haitian Publishing House is super powerful, printing 5,000 copies, which were only published in November, and it is said that they have sold more than half. I am so worried about the publisher losing money!

Why am I always ashamed? I think it's because there are always natural values in my heart, it's a mirror that reflects my life all the time, down to the details of life. Right or wrong, what is beautiful, there must be an unchangeable standard there. I don't have enough willpower, I am always soft to myself, I am obedient to the push of fate, but I can't introspect from time to time, so I am always in shame. But I will not become a bad person, because shame guards me, is my first line of defense, of course, there must be action towards beauty and light, find a way to make the pain in this world less, I will try to start from the people I love around me.

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: The action of "hiding" is also in "Encountering Snow", "it hides its own shadow / pretends to be light", "it pretends that it has not been fire / before fire / it has not been a tree / before trees / it has not been a flower", this kind of pretend is a more intelligent Hiding. Is this poem written about an attitude toward the world?

Zhang Zhan: All poems are written about themselves. Writing about others is also writing through your worldview and values. The poet gives it the function of speaking for himself through the objects he chooses, and there is a human destiny in all poetry.

All things can be "li", and the poet makes a sound with his own breath, so every poet must have his own different voice. Different poets can never write the same snow, because the poets have different breaths. If there is my attitude towards the world in the poem "Encounter with Snow", I think it can be said.

Xiaoxiang Morning Post: In "The Sea of Flowers", "Just to see these flowers / I stepped on a lot of flowers again"; in "Grassland", "Tomorrow the cattle and sheep will be sent away", in "Yuanjiang", "He sings wild mountain songs and pains / The ferry you want to go to / The bluestone slabs there are empty", etc., these things are beautiful, but also easy to be injured and even easy to lose. You love and pity all this, and is your inspiration for writing poetry born of this love and pity?

Zhang Zhan: Yes. Poetry must be full of emotion, and this emotion is actually a thought, and what kind of thinking there is, what kind of feeling will there be. For example, you must first believe that every life in the world is equal, has the right to pursue happiness, and no one has the privilege to despise and trample on other people, and then you will face the powerless, the weak, the bullied and insulted in life, feel pity, scream for them, fight for them, you don't think those sacrifices are taken for granted, and your emotions arise from it. When you encounter those beauties, if you abstract them, they are sublime and eternal, but they are concrete to the embodiment and individuality of beauty, they are all short and fragile, how not to lament! How could I not love it more! How can you not cry for them! I'm going to say something that might be laughed at again.

I have never felt that human feelings are inferior to people's thoughts. Everything that the human spirit is born of is for people, to help people, to make people live a better life, so that people can find meaning and destination! Philosophy, religion, literature and art are incomparable, and the birthplace of all thought is based on love and reverence for human beings, love or reverence for the beauty of the universe. This is also the birthplace of poetry, but the way poetry expresses emotions is better.

Xiaoxiang Morning News reporter Liu Jianyong

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