Our life now is full of disposable things. Disposable tableware, disposable raincoats, disposable medical appliances... These disposable things, while facilitating our lives, also bring some problems, that is, the garbage has increased, and the damage to the ecological environment has increased.
What people did not expect is that in our modern poetry, there are even "disposable poems". Xie Mian, a famous poetry critic, wrote a book called "The History of New Chinese Poetry". In this book, Lei Pingyang's poem "Thirty-Seven Tributaries of the Lancang River in Lanping County, Yunnan" is included. In this book, Xie Mian naturally evaluated Lei Pingyang's poem.
The poem embodies "the change of the situation that emerges in the monotony" and "the firmness of the river 'one intention to the south'". Xie Mian believes that this is a novel poem with significance that cannot be ignored. However, Xie Mian later said that this was a "one-time" writing and could not be repeated and imitated, otherwise it would spoil the reader's appetite.
Lei Pingyang's poem is indeed "monotonous", monotonous as if he was counting or reciting geographical knowledge. This poem also does embody the "firmness" of going south, how many kilometers have been "flowing south again", and nothing else. This poem is indeed "novel" enough, so new that no one has ever thought that poetry can be written in this way, or that it can be written in this way, and it can even be called poetry.
Xie Mian (image from the Internet)
Can we imitate, for example, how many tributaries of the Qingjiang River in Enshi and how many tributaries of the Yangtze River in Sichuan? To expand further, how many peaks of Dabie Mountain and how many intersections of National Highway 318 are written? In this way, does it open up a vast new world of modern poetry? Writing poetry has become easier, as long as you can look at the map.
Obviously, this is not advisable. In Xie Mian's words, such poems can only be written "once". Lei Pingyang's writing in this way is novel, and if you write it again, it is disgusting and will "spoil the reader's appetite." That is to say, Lei Pingyang's poem is unique and unique. Does such a poem still have a meaning? Reading this "novel" poem does not "spoil the reader's appetite"?
Lei Pingyang (Image from the Internet)
Xie Mian once said that poetry critics have the responsibility to select good poems, and said that in the current poetry circle, there are too many praises for each other, "The praise is all good for you and I am good, in fact, it is not very good, there is no good poetry." Xie Mian was indeed right in saying this, but he included Lei Pingyang's "Thirty-Seven Tributaries of the Lancang River in Lanping County, Yunnan" in his book.
Obviously, Xie Mian has a praise attitude towards this poem, so is this considered "touting"? Such novelty has no reference significance, so is this "novelty" or "strange and absurd"? The so-called one-time poetry, that is, after writing, it will not be written again, it will not be read after reading, thrown away like garbage, then this kind of writing itself, is it creating garbage?
We often see poems that are touted by critics as "good poems" that readers read with great disgust. Take the poems of Jia Qianqian, which became popular this year, don't there also be many critics who say that there is "Zen" and "spirituality" in the poems, saying that Jia Qianqian is a "natural poet"? Isn't the so-called good poetry now all disposable? Has anyone read it once and want to read it a second time?
Therefore, today's poetry critics do not have the standard of good poetry. They only look at people, not poetry. They use who the author is as the sole basis for judging whether poetry is good or bad. Some people write poems that are not good, while others write poems that are good and bad. The so-called watching the dish and eating the meal has become watching the poet's comments.
We don't need, at least not for now, the so-called "one-off poetry." Such poetry is meaningless except to create more garbage. What is novel and firm is not expressed in this way. In the history of New Chinese poetry, there should be no place for one-time poetry, just like the Ping An Jing, can it be counted as poetry? Isn't there also touting, not also novel and firm?