In April 2022, the headline poet of "Mountain Flower" was Ye Deqing. "Mountain Flowers" published 11 poems by Ye Deqing under the title of "Not All Flowing Water Belongs to the Sea". I read each poem carefully, and some of it more than once. To be honest, Ye Deqing's poems are really well written, and they are rare poems that make people feel a little bit after reading them.
The image comes from China Poetry Network
Reading these poems gives me the strongest feeling that there is "Zen" (not the kind of "Zen" that Zhang Qinghua said Jia Qianqian). That is to say, the poems are a bit like a monk who looks down on everything, telling the story of nature. In these stories, there is also a taste of life, some intriguing.
Among them, there are two poems that I like, one is "The Mouth of the Yangtze River", and the other is "God". "The Mouth of the Yangtze River" describes the natural features of the Yangtze River Estuary, with clouds and moons, blue seas, crabs under stones, ants in dead trees, bird nests in trees, and fish in the water. There are both macroscopic and microscopic worlds. The final "sea that can't go/ hometown that can't go back" makes people think a lot.
The image comes from China Poetry Network
The other song, "God", is somewhat ingeniously conceived. The poet personifies the heavens, and everything in the world is arranged by the heavens. "Planting wild vegetables", "planting stones", "digging canals", "releasing all kinds of birds", "raising farmers"... In front of god, human beings are actually no different from stones, wild vegetables, and birds.
The poet describes some natural phenomena and causes in an anthropomorphic way, which really makes people feel refreshed. This reflects the idea that human beings are only part of nature and have no privilege, and the simple idea of "the unity of heaven and man". Human beings belong to nature, and nature is the foundation of human existence.
Ye Deqing (Image from the Internet)
However, after reading these poems of Ye Deqing, there is also a feeling that it is somewhat "decadent", or "lying flat". Human beings are small, and in the face of nature, they can only obey the arrangements of God and have no subjective initiative. God wants us to do whatever we want, and we do what we want. Man is of equal status to wild vegetables, stones, crabs, ants, and birds, and is not superior to them.
Perhaps, the poet Ye Deqing has the meaning of "seeing through the red dust" and "seeing through life"? These 11 poems of his, after reading them, give people the feeling of this. Such thinking, indeed, is a bit old, and they passively accept the arrangement and become "lying flat". Not only can it not be compared with the arrogance of "daring to call the sun and moon for a new day", but there is also a gap with "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, leisurely seeing the South Mountain", after all, Tao Yuanming also took the initiative to "pick" and "see".
Ye Deqing (Image from the Internet)
But as far as the poem itself is concerned, Ye Deqing's poems do have the flavor of "poetry", which will give people an aftertaste after reading. Some of these sentences also make people more impressive, such as "the sea that cannot be reached, the hometown that cannot be returned", such as "The human world is divided into four seasons, the river is divided into north and south, and the people are divided into good and bad", such as "My mother guarded me in the middle of the Yangtze River to return from the reverse current" and so on.
Of course, people have their own aspirations, Ye Deqing wrote, it is estimated that it is the performance of his own life experience. This is the first time I have read Ye Deqing's poetry, plus I am also a poetry layman, perhaps, what I wrote, for some "experts", is a pediatric thing, laughing generously.
Ye Deqing (Image from the Internet)
In the present, modern poetry is difficult for people to see the highlights, and it is still quite a good enjoyment to read ye Deqing's poems. If each of us poets writes poetry with such care, and writes poems that are understandable and memorable, and do not make things mysterious and profound, modern poetry is still promising.