Yuan Kejia Poetry Prize
Poetics Prize
Award-winning critic: Jiang Weak Water
Award-winning works: "The Fragrance of Speech" (Poetry Collection) (Anhui Education Publishing House)
Award speech
：
"The Fragrance of Speech" is included in Eight Commentaries on Contemporary Poetry by Jiang Weishui in the past decade, which are full of rationality but also poetic, freewheeling but insightful. The author has extensively collected and quoted the resources of classical poetry in the mainland and modern poetry in the West, and also has in-depth thinking on the essence of poetry, the form of poetry, and the tradition of poetry. In Yang Lian's "Norilang", the author smelled the "fragrance of the love of man and god" like Chu Ci, and found in Zhang Zao's "Dialogue with Tsvetaeva" that "the oranges of the heart rippled with the fragrance of speech", so this "Fragrance of Speech" also emitted the fragrance of poetry. In view of this, the "Fifth Yuan Kejia Poetry Award and Poetics Award" was awarded to "The Fragrance of Speech" and Mr. Jiang Weishui.
(Written by Liu Wenfei)
(Pictured is Jiang Weak Water and Zang Di)
Weak water in the river
Born in 1963, a native of Qingyang, Anhui. Ph.D. of Chinese University of Hong Kong, he is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University. He is the author of "Synchronization and Displacement of East and West", "Modernity of Classical Poetry", "Record of Blowing Water on the Lake", "Eight Lessons of Poetry", "Thirteen Lines of Small Character Center", "Finger Flower Pulling", "Fragrance of Speech" and so on. He was awarded the Literary Critic of the Year Award at the 15th Chinese Media Awards. "Eight Lessons of Poetry" was named "China's Good Book" in 2017.
Winner of the "Yuan Kejia Poetry Prize and Poetics Award" Jiang Weishui
Recommended Bibliography:
Lectures on Classical Chinese Poetry by Gu Sui, Hebei Education Publishing House, 2018
I once recommended this set of books to the Rice Reading Commune in your city. I think that by listening to the lectures, you can not only recognize the subtlety of the words of the predecessors, but also see the brilliance of the author's personality. The ancients said that it is easy to meet a teacher, but a teacher is difficult to meet. Mr. Gu Sui is a teacher of teaching, and even more so, a teacher of preaching.
Selected works of the winning works
One
The poem begins with a paradox:
In fact, I have never left, I have always been a countryman, a countryman
You no longer need to seduce me with your poverty and beauty.
Compared with countless unreserved praises for the countryside, Song Wei's vision of the countryside has been trained into a worldly sophistication. The countryside, throughout, has been replaced by an anthropomorphic "you", which is a dialogue between the poet and the old friends of the countryside, not from you, nor from you, you and I know each other's roots. Therefore, at the beginning, the poet makes it clear that your beauty cannot seduce me into becoming a pure pastoral poet, and your poverty cannot lure me into anger and resistance. The countryside in Song Wei's eyes, with its shocking poverty and desperate beauty, oscillates between a bumper harvest and a bad harvest.
"I think maybe you look better when you're harvesting." Implicit here is a prayer for the countryside. How many people only care about the beauty of the countryside, but do not care whether it is a good year. They only know that the countryside is good-looking, and they only need the countryside to look good. "Actually, I don't have much", the implication is "actually, you don't have much". These two sentences are absolutely casual, and the subtext is very rich.
"Count, just these/ short pounds less than two pieces of loose silver." The use of currency such as silver is anachronistic mistake, but the poet is deliberately wrong, in order to meet the theme of "thousands of years later, I am still drinking while rushing to the road". This was true thousands of years ago, and it is true thousands of years later. However, it is always a little inappropriate to use "short pounds less than two" to modify scattered silver, because once the "pound" is discussed, it cannot be said that "scattered pieces". It should be called an adjective, which should be called "insufficient color". Of course, the poet does not care that the word is not sufficiently colored, for he is about to write his proud sentence:
But I want to use them
Buy bitter bamboo shoots from you that have just come down the mountain, if the bamboo forest agrees;
I want you to sell me the fungus full of slopes, if the sparse sun rain agrees;
Let my baby go to the wild shop to play two or two small bars, if the grain agrees;
I'm old, and I still want the body of the little powder, if their hearts agree;
(Actually, I also want to say: I want the hearts of the little fans, if their bodies agree).)
A kind of eloquent tone, there is a deal, it is particularly moving. There are changes in repetition, and there are repetitions in changes, presenting the most flexible rhythm and melody of modern Chinese. Five "If... Agree", it is really called heavenly wishes. Two or two small glasses of wine, bitter bamboo shoots, mushrooms, the poet broke his fingers in counting. Coupled with the following article, "so many open pigs, so many flinging vegetables, so many crisp noodles", it is all the "bottom details" exposed to our eyes in the countryside. Especially in the last two lines, the body of the little powder and the heart of the little powder, upside down, where have we seen, the love and desire to express so elegantly, so not ashamed?
"Now these eager desires have made me out of human form." I am a man who has been burned by lust, desolate by wine, desolate by color, wandering in the city, and then returning to my hometown. Since returning to one's hometown means healing and rejuvenating one's vitality, that is, returning to rest in peace, why not simply rest in the bosom of the earth. "Why don't I just go a little further down and turn directly into mud, and if it's mud, I can grow what I want." I want to be the me I want. Moreover, man is the earth and will return to the earth. Rest in a certain context means long-sleeping death. And wanting to be the me I want means being reborn, reincarnating into a new person in the pre-made mold of the last clay-making craftsman.
Today, I am made into a human form by a desperate desire. So in other words, the countryside, are you, also because of some urgent desire, make you out of your original form? Isn't it? Boats are speeding, fish are catching up, logging and papermaking are in progress, and canning is getting more and more? You don't care about that, do you? You wouldn't be accommodating to yourself, would you? "I have already lived so tired and collapsed that I have even omitted the action of looking up", is it necessary to accommodate myself and lift up in a higher direction? You, the great country, also save your mind, don't want to make any money.
"I know that when I say this, there are a lot of plants that think my temper has deteriorated because their green leaves have turned yellow and drifted to zero." There is a mysterious induction in the world, it is said that in the rape flower field you can not say about oil pressing, otherwise the rape flower will definitely produce seeds. In the bamboo forest, you can't say that you can make bamboo mats, or bamboo will not grow. In the countryside, don't say the opposite of the harvest, the green leaves will immediately fall. The countryside is full of such a primitive reverence.
But, the village, you, I know the roots of the old friend, "I reckon you have a similar view of this", your frozen river, your stationary kite, all indicate that you and I are mentally isomorphic. We are all regressionists, and we only hope that the world will remain the same. Time is racing, catching up, but the world is still the same. This is also meant in one of Song Wei's "Chronicles of the Garden of Gui", in which he mentions the age at which the little fan was suspended and could no longer grow up. "Seiffert said: 'The world is as beautiful as it is', and the beauty of the world is in/its pause." What the poet wants to say is that although today's countryside is facing changes that have not occurred in thousands of years, no matter what changes we see, in the end everything will be the same as before: "Thousands of years later, I am still drinking while rushing."
Above your head, a kite stands still, and the sky does not know where it has gone...
The sky appears many times throughout the poem, and its constant appearance makes us suspicious. An image repeats, and it may be symbolic. Of course, if an image appears only once, and the force is strong enough, it can also be a symbol. And this sky is constantly appearing in the poem, and we can't help but think about it. Let's assume that the sky here represents the ideal, and this ideal has collapsed, "the sky does not know where it has flown", and the second verse also mentions that there is no more heaven, and "higher" is gone. By the third verse, "There is no sky, because the sky has curled up in a clump." The ideal is gone, and we simply go a little further.
It is a worldly poem, a poem of experience: "I have lived so tired and collapsed that I have not even omitted the movement of looking up." "Looking up is the so-called looking up at the stars, right?" But the sky is gone, what are you looking up for? "Here and here, except for myself, is the mud all over your body", in the past, the new critics of the new batch of commentators said that a poem had to be carefully set up with some opposite tendencies, some heterogeneous impulses. This method of analysis will always be valid for complex poetry. This "Homecoming", the sky and the mud, one up, one down, higher and lower, always form a penetrating tension. However, they appear more hidden and tangled than ordinary poems, because sophistication and experience have made the poet abandon the sublime in the general sense.
Two
The beginning of the second verse echoes the first verse: "I have already said, the countryside, and we will not need to draw each other to each other from now on." What does that mean? The poet will not fall into the mood for the countryside to accept with a warm heart, and the countryside will not have to be poor and decayed enough for the poet to see and weep. The two sides only take a peaceful posture, facing each other in a simple way, because "wealth is superfluous". "Nor did God frighten me with a second walk on the water," from Matthew 14: "The ship was in the sea, and it was shaken by the waves because the wind was not good." On the fourth day of the night, Jesus walked on the sea to the disciples. When the disciples saw him walking on the surface of the sea, they panicked and said, 'It's a ghost.' He was afraid and cried out. A similar statement is made in verse 3: "Because even Pangu did not scare you with earthquakes or mudslides such as recreating heaven and earth." Poets and the countryside do not need these exaggerations. So what's needed? All it takes is --
With you, sit on the mound and join the strong aroma of houttuynia cordata
Isn't it better to make the surrounding air allergic than to cut wood and make paper?
The entire "Homecoming" critique of the damage caused by industrialization to the countryside ends with only two image points, one for logging and papermaking, and one for canning. "Since the road has become better and better, and the cans have become more and more, it is already difficult for both of us to become bad", which is a bit ironic, but it will never be so painful, because if measured in thousands of years, these are just some scabies diseases.
"Daze can be a career for the rest of our lives." The real posture is no posture, very plain, even tired, collapsed:
I drink, I always drink,
When the mountain color came into view, the wine just passed my head.
The wine was above my head, and the mountains were full of mountains looking up at the little wine above my head,
You can't see anything clearly, but you know it's clear enough.
We can find out how much drama there is here: what "look at each other and not tired, only respect the pavilion mountain", what "I see how feminine Qingshan is, and Qingshan sees that I should be like this". Now it's just "the little wine that looks up at my head with the mountains in my eyes."
What else is there to disturb our excitement, and what else is higher than our excitement?
Since there are no more days, there is no "higher" anymore.
It's just that before, the rain used to rain all the way down into my body, thinning the blood,
It made me appear innocent and shallow in years earlier than "ever" I had.
The use of two abstract words "higher" and "once" here as the noun subject is very appropriate and natural. As opposed to innocence and shallowness, it is heavy and deep. Judging from the poet's life course, it is also a mature landing. It was the dirt that brought him back to life. "Homecoming" writes that the grace of the reconstruction of the countryside is highlighted:
How many years have I lived in vain?
Now that all the mud has buried my heels, I am heavy again,
Or rather, I finally turned alive and used my mud legs
Trekking through the fields, I even fell into a tendon fight: I saw you all at once.
Country, I always meet you in the lowest place, and
Avoidance – because you're not just at the bottom, you're in the corners.
Song Wei's poems, an idea, a theme, are often written repeatedly. The poem "Chronicle of the Landlord" has a related intertext: "The fields are full of surprises. Casually falling /The mud I chewed into my mouth was so clean and delicious. And the Koizumi Chronicle: "A stumbling step into his turf, / into his mold, all turned into mud." In fact, the praise for the countryside is no more than such a sentence. As for "low" and "high", he also has a very good statement in the poem "On the Grave":
It's like my writing,
Originates from life and is lower than life. I know your life after death
It's the same: it's impossible to be equal to, much less higher than life.
Such a writing creed, of course, rejects all kinds of renderings and exaggerations. Be wary of theories that elevate our writing from humble to great and sublime, for it may be false and untrue. The whole "Homecoming" is low and lower. This is the philosophy of the poet, tired and solid. Poetry is often a momentary feeling, a sudden awakening of life, but let us not be blinded by the so-called poetry. Don't put poetry on your lips, as soon as you hang on your lips, it becomes a talking point, a pretext. So the "poetic dwelling" of existential philosophy has been broken. "Dirt" is the most humble and important, and we cannot take it as a light object. The English metaphysical poet John Donne has a passage that can almost be used as an inscription for Homecoming:
Man is nothing but dirt; yes; but dirt is the center. Those who dwell in Sturgeon and know how to dwell in Sturgeon are resting in his true center (Man is but earth; ‘tis true; but earth is the centre. That man who dwells upon himself, who is always conversant in himself, rests in his true center）。
So the countryside is in the lowest place, in the farthest corner, because I am one with you.
Three
So we move on to the last section:
As you can see, my arithmetic is even more rudimentary than that of the knotted roper:
A few mountains, a few rivers, a few roads, a few people, no sky.
"Knotted rope" means to return to the "beginning of man" and to "the beginning of heaven and earth". In the third verse, a large number of childish images suddenly appeared, "sitting in rows, eating fruits and fruits", "the format of primary school students", and so on, all of which are one of the new people who make mud and mold.
Because the sky is already curled up, wait until one day when there is a good book
It was only unfolded by a few people reading the book on some scattered pages.
The first time, the four of us, sitting in rows, eating fruit and fruit, came to open the book.
The sky will unfold on the scattered pages of a good book, and nature is a metaphor for a reclaimed ideal, a reconstructed faith. So we say that the sky in the poem is a symbol, which is by no means equal to the natural sky. "In the darkness, you are like a hostess using a flashlight to let us sit in the right place", "Darkness" is also a generalization of the times, and you, the village, have re-claimed us and guided us to the designated position.
Ah, so many chickens, so many chickens without a word, all together to endure the bird flu;
So many open pigs, so many flings, so many crispy noodles!
You can't use "chicken nests", you have to use "chickens", and what comes out of the "chickens inhabit the nest, the sun rises at night, and the cattle and sheep come down" in the Book of Poetry is the countryside that has been like ancient times.
"Open pig" is "swimming pig", which is a maverick pig written by Wang Xiaobo. There is an interesting story in Chen Futong's "Wushan Manuscripts" that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Huang Kan's disciple Zhu Mubo moved west to Zhejiang University in Zunyi to become a librarian, and a professor from Xiajiang saw a peasant house in Yongxing Town herding pigs and laughed at this backward way of living together in primitive society. Zhu Mubo then said: The Qianlong Emperor had a royal poem cloud in the lower Jiangnan Province, "Sunset Fangcao Sees The Swimming Pig", this "Swimming Pig" we call in Guizhou "open pigs", but this pig does not know how to swim to the countryside of Guizhou. It caused a burst of laughter from everyone. Qianlong's imperial poem is quite famous, And Hu Shi once said that ancient pigs did not enter the poem, and Liang Qichao said this poem, which greatly embarrassed Hu Shi.
"Throwing vegetables" is made of Muchuan "croissant" as the main raw material, using a unique folk process pickled, fresh, fragrant, crisp, tender, unique flavor.
The crispy noodles of "crispy noodles" are similar to oil residue, which is made of pork belly, stir-fried in a pot, and then add some cooking wine and brown sugar, stir-fry slowly over low heat until it is brown and not paste, yellow and fragrant, and it is crispy and crispy to eat.
It is all rural food, unremarkable, but it is a small harvest in the countryside. The poet liked to list the things of his hometown, such as the Chronicle of the Landlord, writing about the Qingming grass, houttuynia, ditto leaf, and sour pulp grass peddled in the market; writing about the white carp with fine scaly muscles, the tip of the amaranth snatched from the pig's mouth, and the cowhide dish that could be beaten into straw shoes..." These are some of the most humble things. "The first one who loves to list the things in his hometown is Wang Zengqi. At the beginning of his novel, he likes to introduce small shops: this one sells burnt cakes, the one sells sesame oil, and further south point sells velvet flowers. I also like to list a number of vegetables and fruits, what rhombus root, mustard fruit, white, bergamot. That tasteful tone, in Wang Zengqi's "My Hometown", quoted the teacher Shen Congwen Chang'ai said, "All this is really a holy place." In the words of Song Wei's poem "Chronicle of the Landlords", "This is a human world that even the gods and immortals can't see." Song Wei's imagery and tone are like Wang Zengqi's.
Cross the Liangqiao, from an incense-making workshop to the north, on more than a hundred stone steps
Finally I saw the light.
... (Unfinished)
Recommended bibliography of rivers and weak waters
directory
2022-2 "October"
novelette
Other people's room/005 bells for truth
Small bean bag of jianghu /027 Gu Yu
Phoenix Dance/067 Cheng Qing
Hunting/128 Meng Xiaoshu
Golden Snowflakes of the Earthly Floating /145 Suranduo
short story
Wedding ceremony/059 Li Chao
Anniversary/163 Tao Liqun
Novel Shinkansen
Go to Haikou (short story)/196 Ding Xiaoning
Moonlight (short story)/206 Ding Xiaoning
Face and Self (Creative Talk)/213 Ding Xiaoning
Debut is Hope (Commentary)/215 Meng Fanhua
Prose
Down from Lü Liang/108 Li Jingze
Notes on the Matter of Extras/173 Leaf Rhymes
Discourse with the Long River/187 Zhang Yang Sheep
The things of the earth
The Introverted Beauty of Desert Life (Part III)/113 Half Summer
Wilderness Apocalypse/121 Liu Dongli
Read and be read
Divine Comedy: Divine Comedy/051 Liu Wenfei
Organ lineage
That lost face/092 Jing Wendong
Poetry
Safari/217 River away
Morning bird with sunflower/220 field grass
Kunlun and others/223 Guo Jianqiang
Ten Shadows on Earth/226 Zhou Qingrong
Spring, now it's your turn to express/230 Zhang Hongbo
Eucalyptus and river/232 Pak Ding An
New Era: Yuantouzhu Series/234 Zong Renfa Pang Yuliang Zhang Hongbo Yubang Sentinel Cheng Xiuhu Lu Wenli Zhonghai Zhang Xiaoxue Gong Xuan Ren Bai Wang Mingfa Wang Xuexin
Arts
Cover burning Qiu Dandan
Feng II Parent-child game Qiu Dandan
Seal three upstairs Qiu Dandan
Cover design Zhao Pingyu
Title inscription Cui Manli
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