When 2021 ends, I think of four key words in the face of a year's poetry: growth point, openness, historicity, and totality. In this year, "Sar literature and poetry", "Moby Dick", "Sichuan Poet" and the WeChat version of "True Suspense" were launched. In this year, the representative poet Robert Bray, the great Polish poet Adam Zagaevski, as well as Bai Hang, Wei Yang, Ye Tingfang, Guan Guan, Fu Tianlin, Hu Xudong, died...
New Age Poetry: Cultural Spaces and Growth Points
The multicultural space of poetry, the huge population and output of poetry creation, and the diversified communication channels of activity, popularization, electronicization and interactivity have become phenomena that attract people's attention. In particular, the participation of new media has made the three-dimensional communication ecological chain of "periodicals + network + WeChat public account + poet self-media + short video" have taken shape. In 2021, poetry magazine and Kuaishou short video platform cooperated to launch a poetry recitation activity of "come and read poetry, read poetry together", in addition to poets, poetry lovers in many industries participated in it, and more than 2,500 videos have been launched, with more than 150 million views.
The mutual improvement and mutual naming between the new era and the poets reveal the demands and inherent propositions of the times in the development of poetry. In the face of the overall trend of the times, the "new era" has become an important historical device for evaluating current poetry, such as the key column of the Poetry Journal" "Poetry in the New Era", the key publishing project of the theme poem "New Era Poetry Library", the long-term activity "Beijing Forum on Poetry in the New Era", and the compilation and selection of "Initial Heart, Red Flag and New Journey - Selection of Excellent Works of Poetry in the New Era". This is not only the cognitive principle of the times, but also the critical principle of aesthetics. The aesthetics of poetry writing and its production and dissemination forms, as well as diverse cultural functions, present more and more possibilities in the context of the new era. The poet's writing identity is increasingly characterized by non-specialization and popularization, and the involvement of poetry in the era and the degree of popular participation in poetry are increasing.
Contemporary Chinese poetry adheres to the principle of integrity and innovation, keeps pace with the times, and constantly strengthens the interactive relationship between poetry and realistic expression, and the daily experience and the new landscape of the times, as well as fresh language methods and rhetorical techniques, bring vitality to the creation of traditional poetry. The publication of "Our War epidemic - A Selected Poems of the Whole People Fighting the New Crown Pneumonia Epidemic" as a whole shows the lyricism of the current poetry creation to the times and the spirit of the poet. The Chinese Poetry Society launched the "Development Plan for Chinese Poetry in the 14th Five-Year Plan Period", which involves the "Nine Major Projects" for the development of Chinese poetry in the context of the new era, namely, the poetry boutique creation project, the poetry criticism and research project, the poetry teaching quality improvement project, the poetry talent team construction project, the poetry publishing and dissemination project, the poetry organization construction project, the poetry work linkage project, the learning and improvement project of the leading members and members of the society, and the poetry website linkage sharing project.
Liu Nian plays the role of a wanderer and troubadour in the face of nature, while Gong Xuemin re-engages in a "distant gaze" dialogue with ecological, natural, species, and historical issues in a cosmopolitan and post-industrial context in a "distant gaze" approach. The nearly 80 poems involved in the entire collection of poems in "Endangered" are thematic texts constructed under the umbrella of "endangered consciousness" and "life culture". Gong Xuemin focuses on the analysis of the fate of "animals", but is not eager to establish a single "ecological ethics and poetics", but provides phenomenological restoration and dissected in-depth description through life culture, spiritual genealogy and "dictionary". When the "endangered" consciousness suddenly descends in the text again and again, the poet has to use the powerful and divided mental image, thematic consciousness, spiritual elements, cultural archetypes, and the illusion of individual subjectivity to complete the process of stitching, making up and reconstructing again and again.
In recent years, military poetry has not formed a holistic writing trend and a striking cultural phenomenon, but more in fragments and individual ways, but Ding Ronggeng's twenty-four-line poetry collection "Mountains and Rivers Guanji" is an important harvest. These "new border poems" confirm the "memory" function of poetry and the unique life experience and spiritual resume of a poet in the Dulongjiang checkpoint and border pass. These "poems" of Ding Ronggeng basically revolve around the space of the Dulongjiang Border Checkpoint in northwest Yunnan, yunnan, and are the gathering and radiation of spiritual vision again and again.
Zhao Muzhen takes 24 contemporary active "critic poets" as the starting point, providing a unique and effective perspective for understanding contemporary poetry. In terms of intergenerational replacement, the "post-70s" and "post-80s" are already considered to be the older generation. The Selected Poems of the Post-70s Representatives, edited by Lü Xuan and Reed An, includes more than 30 poets and 4 "post-70s" poetry research monographs. Chen Bingjie wrote a critical monograph on "post-80s" poetry, "Inner Flame: A Study of Chinese Post-80s Poetry". The writing group of young poets represented by the "post-90s" and generation Z has attracted more and more attention, and young poets have become a new growth point.
2021 is a key year for winning the all-round well-off and fighting a decisive battle against poverty, and the theme of the times has become a writing boom. Gao Pengcheng's "Azure" expresses the cultural consciousness of the community of human destiny through the Maritime Silk Road, Yang Ke's "Making Clusters of New Worlds with Molds" and Long Xiaolong's "In the Name of the Light Chaser" focuses on the fresh writing experience inspired by new industries and new technologies, Liu Xiaowei's "Sit on the High-Speed Railway, Go to See The China of Youth" and Li Muma's poetry collection "High-speed Rail, High-Speed Rail..." Highlight the speed landscape of the new era with railways and transportation as the entry point, Gong Xuemin's "Dajiang", Wang Ziliang's "The Legend of the Yangtze River" and Ran Ran's "Dajiang Go" Focus on the blood relationship between the Yangtze River culture and the Chinese nation and the future picture. Among them, Wang Shandan's theme poem "Hualuping Handbook", which combines the dual areas of "anti-epidemic" and "poverty alleviation", has been widely recognized by the industry. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a social reality and everyday life. When the new crown pneumonia epidemic swept the whole world, when more and more people had a deeper feeling because they were "isolated", "closed" and "home observation", the poets represented by Ji Di Majia, Ye Yanbin, Liang Ping, Lei Pingyang, Zhang Zhihao, Chen Xianfa, etc. did not do bystanders or hastily deal with "reality", but maintained the consciousness of language, rhetoric, will and ideological difficulty in writing on similar themes. Overall, "anti-epidemic poetry" has reactivated the material capacity and the spirit of reality in the deep dialogue between the individual and the epidemic, poetics and sociology. This is the linguistic fact and spiritual reality established by the poet and his life in the induction and echo of reality, and it is the spiritual synchronicity that ultimately converges into the spiritual synchronic.
Minority poetry and new industrial writing
Many minority poetry emphasizes the awe and inquiry of religion, ethnicity, history, culture, life and local knowledge, whether in terms of spiritual formation, emotional tone, motif consciousness or language style, rhetorical strategy, lyrical characteristics, and imaginative space. Ethnic minority poets are very concerned about the importance of the environment, ecology and homeland in their writing, which are not only spatial dimensions but correspond to historical, ethnic, cultural, temporal and psychological systems. In the context of the new era, minority poetry shows a new poetic atmosphere, depth of ideological field and spiritual flow, highlighting the sense of the times and the overall trend of poetry writing. "Poetry" and "song" are combined in their place, such as the creation of Wu Wula, Rurodiki, Adra Wulin, Sarentua, Narenqiqige, Wu Yingli, Zheng Gang, Er Baolud, Baoyin Tamir, Ma Ying, Pamir Aslebek, Tokun Shayt, Nurtohuto Dubanale, Kerim Timur, Zula Baixiannari and others. Sha Maozhi's "The Moon In the Bowl" and Zhang Yuanlun's "Chatting with the Yangtze River" show the new appearance of the younger generation of ethnic minority poets, not only the national spirit of persistence and cultural nostalgia under the vision of modernity, but also the open nature of writing skills, language and depth of thought. For more than a decade, Sha Maozhihua has insisted on writing in Tibetan and Chinese, and the process of conversion, dialogue and even integration from mother tongue to Chinese is very difficult, especially for poetry, and the language element is even the first. If we look at the boundaries, composition, and techniques of language, some of The poems of Sha Maozhi still escape the Chinese we are accustomed to understanding and contacting, with a sense of blockage during reading and a sense of strangeness when converting Tibetan. Zhang Yuanlun's "Yangtze River Lyricism" embodies spiritual mapping and poetic cognition.
In the process of the accelerated development of new industries, emerging industries and new technologies, a large number of new types of industrial workers have emerged, and the social situation of workers and the richness and new experience of industrial poetry and the spiritual quality urgently need to be observed and summarized from all levels of commentary, publication and dissemination. Pioneers: A Century of Worker Poetry is a collection of representative poems by more than 100 poets since 1918. Looking back at a hundred years of history, workers' poetry was born and refined in the flame of struggle, set sail and sailed in the tide of construction, they told history through fiery or deep poetry lines, and praised generations of admirable industrial heroes and models of the times. Around the new era of workers' poetry, we will see the development and changes of new industries and global manufacturing in different periods and the transformation of the psychology of industrial workers in the post-industrial era through workers, factories, machines, production lines, industrial parks, cities, suburbs, urban-rural junctions, rural areas, transportation networks, electronic screens, etc.
Openness and Historicization: Translations and Anthologies
The openness of poetry is reflected in the interlingual, cross-regional, and cross-cultural translation, communication and dissemination of poetry, as well as the introduction of poetry anthologies of different standards.
The translation of poetry in 2021 still maintains a high-speed development trend. At present, poetry translation and research are roughly divided into foreign import translation and overseas sinologist research, chinese traditional poetic classics, ancient classic poets and chinese new poetry overseas translation, and Chinese ethnic minority poetry translation between different languages. In 2021, the representative translations mainly include "Twenty New Translations of Foreign Poets", "New Nine Leaves Translation Poems", "Turtle Island: Snyder's Poetry Collection", "Fire And Rejection of Heaven: Gilbert's Poetry Collection", "Death Fugue: Selected Poems of Paul Celan", "Wallace Stevens's Complete Poems", "Our Season's Poetry - Stevens Poetry Collection" and so on. The main foreign dissemination of Chinese poetry is Darius Thomas Lebioda's "The Flame That Never Goes Out- A Commentary on the Poetry of Guidimaga" (translated by Zhang Zhenhui), the Polish edition of "Selected Contemporary Chinese Poetry", the Spanish edition of "Chinese Contemporary Female Poets" and "Endless Landscapes - Poems from the Yangtze River". The work of 40 contemporary Chinese poets, Tower: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry, was translated into Spanish and published in Colombia.
The openness and differences of contemporary poetry are reflected in numerous poetry collections, anthologies, and almanacs. The "Phoenix Poetry Library", "Standard Poetry Series", "Chinese Good Poetry", "Yazhong Poetry Series", "Grinding Iron Reading Poetry Society" and "Ivy Poetry Series" have successively launched self-selected collections of "Forty Years" or "Thirty Years" by dozens of representative poets such as Duoduo, Munch, Yang Lian, Wang Xiaoni, Haizi, Luo Yihe, Zhang Zao, Ji Di Majia, Xichuan, Han Dong, Yu Jian, Ouyang Jianghe, Wang Jiaxin, Lu De'an, Song Lin, Yang Li, Zhai Yongming, Li Yawei, Xu Jingya, etc. These summative poets' anthology represents the personal style and overall outlook of contemporary Chinese poetry writing since the 1980s as a whole, and also provides an important incision into the poetry of our overall understanding of poetry in the past forty years. Starting from the historical dimension of "forty years" or "thirty years", in the face of holistic texts and corresponding reading and judgment, we are not only facing a "contemporary" vision, but also a "historical" vision, that is, it needs to be placed in the historical genealogy and dynamic discourse system to examine its characteristics, functions and influence, especially the "influence" relationship between them and the previous generations of poets and future generations, and whether the "post-50s" and "post-60s" generations have formed their own "small traditions". In addition, there is a more important and absolutely unpredictable criterion, which is "futurism", that is, who in a generation can finally cross the limits of time and space to reach the future time and space and future readers, which is the effectiveness and vitality of writing.
What we expect is not how many writers appear in an era, how many poets appear in a generation or generation, but how many iconic poets and texts of absolute importance and distinction are produced. These poets we can call "the ultimate poet", "the poet of totality" or "the poet of poets". Yu Jian's "Notes Collection", "Brown Leather Notes", Zang Di's "Series of Books", "Association", "Introduction", "Brief History", "Poetry Botany", Lei Pingyang's "Notes" and "Yunnan" series, Chen Xianfa's "Nine Chapters" and "Ku" Poetics, and the "Canal" series of poems by Hu Xian, Shen Wei, Gu He and others confirm that every aspiring and ultimately impulsive writing individual is adding his own entries to an "Ultimate Poetic Dictionary" and striving for the ultimate goal of becoming a "total poet".
Conclusion
At the end of 2021, the poet Xiang Yixian published Du Fu's nearly 440,000-word commentary "Silhouette of the Prosperous World". When measuring the qualities of contemporary poets in terms of ultimate meaning and historical, synchronicity and future, we must ask: Where is the "Du Fu" or "Li Bai" of contemporary Chinese poets? Maybe they're all around us, right among their contemporaries, maybe it's all unknowable.