At the beginning of each month, it is the release period of the major publication "Headline Poet". To be honest, since I knew that China Poetry Network had the habit of publishing this, I was fascinated. Always wondering which "famous poets" will become the headline poets of which "famous publications"?
The image comes from China Poetry Network
No, the headline poet of "Yangtze River" in March 2022 was released, it is Bai Hua. "Yangtze River" published eight poems by Bai Hua under the title of "To Jiangnan", all of which described Jiangnan. Since it is the poem of the headline poet, how can it be read. Sure enough, one of them, "Shaoxing, Eight Plates", caught my interest.
This song "Shaoxing, Eight Plates" has two subsections, the first subsection makes people a little confused, it feels like the local dialect of Shaoxing? For example, "big pear head", "Sheng Bu Lai", "Exchange" and so on. However, the second verse is very easy to understand, as long as you graduate from elementary school, you should be able to read it.
Of course, "understanding" here is only a literal understanding, but to really understand this poem, it is obviously not so simple. The eight plates were pigs, fish, ducks, dogs, cats, cows, sheep and chickens, each with something different in their mouths. What is the meaning of these eight plates? What does it represent?
Bai Hua (image from the Internet)
Even if there is really any meaning, so that it is listed, and the branches become poems? It seems that it should not be so simple, and there should be some other deep meaning. Otherwise, how can it be a poem? And it's a headline poem. What is the meaning of that? Only the poet himself, and the editor, know about it.
Coincidentally, just two days ago, in March 2022, Green Wind published a poem by its "headline poet" Hai Nan, "A Long Time Ago", which is also such a style. Multiple "a long time ago" are listed together and become a poem. Are all poems written like this now? Is this a good poem that major publications and editors like?
If that's the case, then writing poetry is simple now. Just find an idea, and then repeat the list, write as long as you want, and write until you don't want to write. One of the advantages of writing such poems is that it doesn't take a lot of brains.
Such a poem can't help but remind people of the famous masterpiece "The Peace Sutra", which is a work that takes the repetition and listing to the extreme. The "Ping An Jing" was once a sensation, and even the grand situation of Luoyang paper was expensive, which can be regarded as a phenomenon-level event in the poetry world.
Image from Poetry Journal
As far as I know, this repetitive list of poems first appeared in 2005. In October 2005, the second half of the "Poetry Journal" published Lei Pingyang's "Thirty-Three Tributaries of the Lancang River in Lanping County, Yunnan". This poem is a repeat of "how many kilometers to flow south".
This poem by Lei Pingyang was evaluated as a "one-off poem" by Xie Mian, the "titan of poetry". That is, poetry written in this way is enough at one time, and no more will spoil the appetite. However, it is clear that the poets did not listen to Xie Mian's words, but wrote this "one-off" poem again and again.
Lei Pingyang (Image from the Internet)
In order not to appear lonely and unheard, I specially searched for "Shaoxing Eight Plates". But apart from a Shaoxing Bapanxia and a dish called "Shaoxing Eight Treasures", there is nothing else. However, this search is still a bit rewarding, that is, I saw this poem in Bai Hua's blog. The note on the time of writing of this poem is: March 2012.
Unexpectedly, Bai Hua's poems from ten years ago became the "headlines" of "Yangtze River". Does this mean that modern poetry has not improved in the past decade, but has regressed? However, there is some truth in this statement, and in the past decade of modern poetry, it seems that there are no decent works coming out.
However, even this work from ten years ago, to be honest, it is quite difficult to read, so that people do not understand that this is good poetry? If you write dozens of plates and hundreds of disks somewhere, will you be able to win the "Chinese Long Poetry Award"?
Therefore, I still have the old view that the headline poets of various publications now do not introduce how many works the author has published, how many awards have been won, and how many honors they have received, but to introduce where these poems are good and why they can become "headlines". Lest people like me, who can't read it, think that this is not only not a good poem, but even a "poem".