What is the level of "Liu Nian's" poem "Rice Flower Fish"? After reading this poem, do you have the confidence to submit it to "Poetry Magazine"?
Author: General without a gun
◎ Citations for comment articles are from: Poetry Magazine, the author's real name is Liu Daifu, a native of Yongshun, Xiangxi, now teaching at Zhangjiajie University, a famous contemporary poet, the former editor of "Poetry Magazine", winner of the People's Literature Poetry Award, the Chinese Young Poet Award, the Red Sorghum Poetry Award, etc.: Liu Nian.
Many times, we regard "returning to the roots" as "the destination of human nature", however, what we forget is that the so-called "home" is actually just an extension of a "local complex" in the depths of childhood or memory.
"You come from your hometown, you should know about your hometown" No matter when and where you are, no matter the green wisps or the gray hair, the grass and trees in your hometown can always inadvertently stimulate the "most inexplicable sense of closeness" in our hearts!
Okay, let's read the poet Liu Nian's "Rice Flower Fish" and feel his "closeness" to his hometown!
"Rice Flower Fish" is a "lyrical" poem with "rich and dry voice, childish rhyme, and poor writing technique". At the same time, it is also a work of "affectionate vernacular theme".
[(1) "Rich and dry rap" refers to the fact that the poetic language is excessively biased towards the expressive level of emotion, ignoring the harmony between the aesthetic context and the poetic environment, which is easy to create a sense of redundancy and dragging mud and water.
(2) "The childishness of the rhyme is not free" refers to the fact that the rhyme and aesthetic tendency highlighted by the poetic language are too naïve and superficial, which is easy to bring people a sense of immature and ignorant innocence.
(3) "Poor writing technique" refers to the self-description method of "self-talk" in the first part of the poem to emphasize or increase the subject's feelings, which is easy to create a superficial, boring and low-level feeling.
Although the rhetorical use at the end of the poem (referring to metaphor, exaggeration, etc.) has a certain artistic effect and aesthetic embodiment, because the first part of the poem is too "mediocre", the jump at the end will give people an unnatural and uncoordinated stiffness, far-fetched and contrived feeling. 】
Let's focus on "Rice Flower Fish" to carry out some discussions, hoping to bring some substantive references to readers' reading and writing.
"Two taels of fish, two taels of happiness...... Reach...... Put it back and keep it for another year."
Here, the main way is to express or highlight the emotional dimension in a certain scene state in the way of "parasitism to things".
However, the beginning of the poem is made in a verbose way of emphasizing "two taels, two taels, half a catty, half a catty, happy, not enough, and again", although it can be moderately increased or added to the emotional atmosphere under the entanglement of the context.
But what we want to say is that Liu Nian, as a poet, may not understand, or even probably not, that his style of "asking and answering himself, and expressing his mind directly" is actually not clever at all, but it is easy to cause "a sense of unclear and chattering nonsense in a young state" to readers.
"How long has the world not been so soft / Just like back then, you held your father's feet / The earth hugged your feet and refused to let go"
There is no special meaning in this part, in short, the poet uses rhetorical devices (referring to metaphor and personification) to poetically describe a certain state of a scene and express emotions (or can be understood as showing the relationship between father and son, etc.).
And "how long has the world not been so soft", although it describes the feeling of stepping on the soil, it can also be extended here as a metaphorical emotion of the poet about certain situations and encounters.
"The earth hugs your feet" can be understood to describe the feeling of feet in the soil, but if you dig deeper, in fact, it can also be derived from the "local complex" or the display of emotions.
"The rice field is a carp that has slipped through the net, and the golden scales are stacked, swimming out of the mountain village and swimming to the sky"
The metaphor of "rice field" as "carp" here is mainly used to depict the scene of rice about to be harvested (or harvested). The "golden scales" in "cascading golden scales" is a metaphor for the color of "rice" (or rice fields), and "cascading" is a concrete description of the number and form of rice fields.
In addition, we need to say that the "swimming out of the mountain village" in "swimming out of the mountain village and swimming to the sky" can be understood here as "rice" (or rice) sold farther, or it can also be understood as a kind of subtle affirmation of the poet's self-worth.
Although "swimming to the sky" has a somewhat "exaggerated" effect, it is actually only a repetition and increment of "swimming out of the mountain village".
It is undeniable that here, as the end of the poem, it is obviously a kind of artistic contrast with the front that is "low before and high after".
- In short, the front is very low-level and boring, while the back (referring to the end) shows a different aesthetic level, of course, although the latter is a superficial rhetorical use, but to a large extent, it plays a role in the artistic conception of the whole poem.
Let's say something unpleasant, if there is no rhetorical embellishment at the end, then Liu Nian's "rice flower fish" is likely to not even touch the edge of the poem, and at most it can only be called a branch of saliva......!
In fact, we also commented on Liu Nian's poetry last year (2023), and he gives us the feeling that most of his works are more inclined to:
"Use the rhetoric of surprise and the repetitive tone of emphasis, as well as excessive jumping, to create a certain picture of contrast, conflict, opposition, and contradiction. ”
However, it is a pity that he did not control it well, or rather, to recognize the scale of application of "shallow and direct" and "obscure", which led to the ...... his works always revealing a "sense of being vague and flashy".
Finally, to tell the truth, if it weren't for Liu Nian, the former editor of "Poetry Magazine", a poem like "Rice Flower Fish" would have been published in "Poetry Magazine", which is really unpredictable .......
Of course, unless one day, the selection standards of "Poetry Magazine" are completely lowered, and the objects of the selection are completely close to the people......!
- Then "another matter"!
About author:General without a gun, real name: He Tianjun, hometown: Wanzhou, Chongqing, chief writer of the contemporary poetics interpretation platform [Commenting on Poetry and Discussing Dao], independent critic, critic, researcher of practical poetics theory;