True perception of the poetic distance

Author: Li Zhen

The writing of Grammatical poetry has long been mature in the pen of ancient poets, and if you write it today, how to open up a new realm in addition to classical poetry, and how to write the feelings of contemporary people, the current situation and experience in the language of contemporary people? The poet Su Yan's two collections of poems with strong classical meaning, "Su Yu" and "Su Yan", touched me and made me rethink the problem of the old style poems created by today's people.

"Su Yu", "Su Yan": Su Yan, published by Taibai Literature and Art Publishing House.

Most of the works in the poetry collection are the perception and experience of the landscapes and clouds of the Qinling Mountains, flowers, birds, grasses and insects, spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the humanistic feelings triggered by natural landscapes. The author said: When you stand at the top of Qinling Mountain, the magnificent weather makes people can't help but have an urgent mood to record it, and Qinling will bring people surprises and beauty every moment. This reminds me of Wang Wei, who wrote poetry and painting in Qinling River a thousand years ago. Also in Qinling, the landscapes faced are more or less the same, and the pursuit of the artistic conception of "painting in poetry and poetry in painting" also has commonalities, but today's poets do not deliberately imitate Wang Wei. After all, the way people perceive the world today is different from the ancients, and the poetic connotations they strive to create are different from those of the ancients, and the way of expression of poetry should be innovative while inheriting the classical poetry style. Reading these two collections of poems, the poet consciously or unconsciously explores the contemporary transformation of the poetic writing tradition.

This is first manifested in the inheritance and deepening of the spatial experience and spatial aesthetics of Chinese poetry. Many Chinese characters themselves have a sense of picture, which can arouse people's associations. Chinese poetry gives full play to this advantage, conveying allegory and generating poetry through the construction of pictures and spaces. This aesthetic character is evident in these two collections of poems. The poet says that when he creates almost every poem, he composes it in his head. For example, the poem "Flying Birds Break the Clear Lake", "Accidental birds passing by, crossing the half-lake blue" is a typical Chinese way of expressing spatial positions and speaking landscapes, and the poem contains a series of images connected by synaesthesia, constructing a three-dimensional spatial picture, and poetry arises spontaneously. The poetry collection also reflects the richer spatial feelings of contemporary people through formal innovation, such as the poet's artistic photographic works in front of the poems, and the pictures and texts echo to give readers a better reading experience.

The inheritance and transformation of the Chinese poetry tradition by the poetry collection is also reflected in the intimate and vivid language characteristics. Much of the poetic innovations in history have been a return from the increasingly rigid written language to the lively colloquialism. Whether it is old style poetry or modern poetry, many poems with deep expressiveness and vitality have the characteristics of being close to spoken language and close to life in language. This characteristic is in the same vein as classical poetry and modern poetry, but it shows many differences due to the difference between ancient and modern spoken language. These two collections of poems also embody the poet's efforts to "write my mouth by hand". In particular, the collection of "Su Yu", which includes many of the poet's new poetry works, has the most obvious characteristics. In the poem "Window Sill", which writes about contemporary human emotions, a small window sill is strung together by the poet with spring flowers, summer finches, autumn leaves, and winter snow, and finally introduces the thought of his father through "Daddy's Bottle". Moreover, through the subtle changes of a group of words such as "ya", "beauty" and "joy" through "in the window" and "outside the window", the window sill expresses the different memories of the four seasons left by the window sill and the deep attachment to his father. The whole poem uses the colloquial language of today's people, which is catchy, lively and elegant, and the ancients' grasp of the poetic characteristics of the Chinese language is in line with it.

The reason why the author writes poetry is out of love, out of the true perception and poetic feelings of nature and humanity in his heart. Therefore, her poems are not intended to imitate the ancients, but to be born from the heart. The so-called "suyan", as the author said, is a simple and plain language, recording the landscape in his eyes and the sighs and feelings that arise from it. Articles such as "Pushing the Cup in the Wind", "Finding a Trail in the Snow", "Sitting in the Autumn Forest", "Ascending to the Bottom of the Eye" and so on make people ignore whether the form is old poetry or new poetry in the process of reading, but immerse themselves in classical feelings and poetic life with the author.

The collection of poems graciously invites the reader into the poems that have a long history. In order for the splendor of the Chinese poetry tradition to continue to bloom today, it is necessary to creatively transform it in combination with the current life and the aesthetics of contemporary people. This transformation is destined to be a painstaking and protracted process of exploration. Su Yan's poetry creation is only an attempt, at present, the poet's excavation of contemporary life, the excavation of the spirit and emotions of contemporary people still need to be deepened, and the poetry's grasp of reality can be more penetrating. Blooming the splendid tradition of Chinese poetry and showing the contemporary vitality of poetry creation needs to be consciously and deeply practiced and explored by more poets. (Li Zhen)

Source: People's Daily