For Chinese poets of my generation, who were born in the 1970s and me, the time to enter poetry coincided with witnessing the dazzling splendor and fall of obscure poetry. The works of Kitajima Shu Ting directly constitute the reading experience and growth experience of our generation. Today, we might say that this experience is both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunately, it is this generation's reading that in the poetry upheaval of the 1980s, it saw first-hand how Chinese poetry entered the modern direction; unfortunately, the lack of maturity of the obscure poetry generation made it impossible for followers to get the most complete nutritional absorption. But neither luck nor misfortune is enough to form a reason for this generation of poets to escape and an excuse for unprovoked conceit.
Poetry is poetry precisely because the position established by poetry beyond various genres is established through its difficulty.
Today, we can calmly look back on the path of writing of this generation. It needs to be admitted that the brief glory of obscure poetry gave later poets irreplaceable poetic enlightenment, but with the turmoil in the poetry world in the nineties, this generation experienced complex, inexhaustible, and obviously non-textual realities faced by poetry writing from the third generation to the present, entering the era of fragmented discourse power. This reality has led to the fact that the text is no longer the only criterion that can be identified, and the circle and jianghu have become the most incorrigible and despicable places in the poetry world and even in the literary world. When the Internet is popular, countless writers suddenly find that as long as they write branch texts on the Internet or forums, they can become a poet. It seems that overnight, poetry has become the most difficult writing style, and even people who have no deep reading and writing experience can cleverly arrange the text in poetry-like lines as long as they are smart enough. In other words, poetry, known as the laurel of literature, has become today a form of writing that is inferior to all genres. But such consumer writing fundamentally ignores the fact that poetry is poetry precisely because the position established by poetry beyond various genres is established through its difficulty.
The value of the poet not only for the poetic style, but also for the poetry itself, is no longer just a simple self-expression, but also has an active sense of commitment to the various aspects of an era.
To say that poetry is difficult is to say that poetry has a threshold.
This fact, which does not need to be explained, has become the most important problem for Chinese poetry today. If this threshold cannot be crossed, poetry can only have a simple self-entertainment effect on the poet himself; in the past, it can be proved that the poet not only has a simple self-expression on the style of poetry, but also on the value of poetry itself, but also has an active sense of commitment to the various aspects of an era.
Poetry has to bear what the times are, not which individual has the final say, but at least, the poetry that bears the burden must be difficult poetry. As far as writing is concerned, difficulty is not another way of saying depth. Understanding the difficulty of poetry, we can understand what Heaney affirms that "poetry has its own authority" means. However, the dissolution of authority and the contempt for authority are precisely a chronic disease that Cannot Be Shaken Off in Chinese poetry today. In a large way, the marginalization of poetry itself causes the writer to involuntarily resist its authority; on a small scale, there is no shortage of individual poets who are eager to destroy poetry into lightness and triviality.
As far as ancient and modern Chinese and foreign poetry is concerned, lightness and triviality are not necessarily bad things. However, for Chinese poetry in the growth period, the pursuit of turning the two into mechanization and pattern will not effectively promote the formation of poetry, at least it is difficult to form a deeper criticism and insight into the poets' faces themselves and the environment of the times in which they live. Brodsky once said that "it is absurd to write poetry in colloquial language", which I do not agree with, but I can understand that the purpose of his saying this is to make higher and harsher demands on the poet and on himself. Poetry is not easy to complete, it is reflected in the poet's mastery of language and the perfection of skill, the core is whether the understanding of poetry itself can be symmetrical to our understanding of life itself. If the novel creates life more at the fictional level, and the prose recounts life more at the reductive level, then poetry should present a richer and more inner expression of experience at the muscle and bone level of life.
Solidity has always been one of the unchanging criteria of poetry, and the intrinsic cause of "the weight carried by a clear verse / better than the whole carriage of exquisite prose" (Milosz).
It is nothing new to say that poetry is an experience, but when we open the history of poetry, we can find that the more master poets, the more generations have proposed and practiced this theme. This is so, on the one hand, in the fact that the experience, after driving the poet into the depths of the self, effectively penetrates a certain common life/spiritual scene from the individual to the other; on the other hand, the life of each generation shapes the experience of each generation, so that each generation must have a different live expression. It cannot be said that the popular spoken language does not show the scene, but showing the scene is by no means equivalent to showing the difficulty of writing required by poetry. The scenes in poetry can be divided into at least two categories, one is the flat scene exposed in the shape, and the other is the experience scene that is restrained in the heart. In the flat scene, the poet is almost eager to imitate the short, superficial, incapable of self-indulgence in his own deep feelings. But poetry has never triumphed by showing off, and to paraphrase Kundera, poetry itself has always demanded to belong to the "wisdom of poetry."
Of course, wisdom is not the same as experience, but to move toward wisdom, you must cross experience. Thus the importance of experience occupies an extremely important place in poetry writing. For poetry, this position is the existence of poetry that proves itself; for the poet, this existence must be realized of reality, and with all energy and full loyalty, launch a targeted attack, in order to force it to flash and stay in the work. For the poet, the most effective attack weapon is to evoke all his reading experience, writing experience, feeling experience, life experience, knowledge of the world, and so on with the call of full concentration. The acquisition of experience, therefore, is an inevitable prerequisite for poetry. The more sufficient this premise, the more solid the core and texture of poetry. Solidity has always been one of the unchanging criteria of poetry, and the intrinsic cause of "the weight carried by a clear verse / better than the whole carriage of exquisite prose" (Milosz).
To say that poetic language is better than prose language is to say that poetic language is more condensed than, and should be, more condensed than, prose language. It is not that prose language allows relaxation, which is always making stricter or even harsher demands on language than poetry.
To say that poetic language is better than prose language is to say that poetic language is more condensed than, and should be, more condensed than, prose language. It is not that prose language allows relaxation, which is always making stricter or even harsher demands on language than poetry. At the very least, poetry is called upon to have a faster run on the arrival of the finish line. But fast is not a superficial glimpse, on the contrary, while putting forward the speed requirements for language, poetry is putting forward further precipitation requirements, precipitation is putting forward requirements for details, details are putting forward requirements for precision, and precision is making slow demands for itself. In this respect, poetic language becomes a paradox in the superficial cycle. Be both fast and slow. But in fact, every time poetry makes a demand, it is proposing a dimension. Dimensions are parallel, so what the poetic language should be removed and what should be burdened must have a direction of movement that is loose on the outside and tight on the inside. It guides the composition of the poet's work, and more often guides the poet to open the experience and complete the mature expression on the text.
Only when there is an image can poetry be clear, accurate and even clear in expression. Although some masters canceled the image in the late period, the abolition of the image is not the same as abandoning the image, but the masters who have reached the peak of poetry have spiritualized the whole into an image.
As a literary genre, one of the commonalities of poetry and other genres is that it is indeed an expression. We always hear people say that poetry is nothing more than a product of adolescence, and that it is absurd to continue to write poetry after middle age. But in fact, the person who utters this sentence, even if he has tried to write in a separate way, is always the layman who has the least understanding of poetry itself and its function. The passion and impulse of youth are indeed easy to lead to the emergence of poetry, but the poetry that appears at this time is often a superficial, hollow, and narrow shallow lyrical work. On the other hand, the works of a mature poet all show the poet's full perception and understanding of life. Although the expression at this time will also be attached to or with the help of lyricism, the lyricism at this time is no longer to complete the poet's personal small emotions and small feelings of the sick or diseaseless groan, but through the lyrical surface, more effectively tear open the heavy coat that envelops life and the world, and reflect the poet's contemplation, contemplation and even excavation towards the ultimate or "eternal theme", so that the poetry reaches a broader space of feelings and a more compassionate reality field. Therefore, the lyrical work after entering middle age shows the poet's complete view of life and the world, or it is the poet's spontaneous expression and disclosure of fate.
Therefore, how to write a poem is better than how we should face a poem. Textually, there is always a "me" speaking in poetry. The "I" in the poem is also the "I" that most easily evokes us to identify with and even be willing to exchange places with it. The willingness to exchange places means that we and the "I" in the poem have achieved the feeling of being in touch with each other. However, it is obviously not enough to seal the heart and mind, because the heart seal also contains the equality of position. As an "indescribable being," poetry is always higher than we are as readers. I have always believed that there is no serious poet who is not in touch with poetry and at the same time filled with an involuntary look. Once such a poet begins to write, he must feel the pressure that poetry exerts from above—sometimes it is man, sometimes it is thing, sometimes it is nature and life itself. As a poet, all you have to do is to present these. From the perspective of the history of world poetry, presentation has always been a great standard established by poetry and influenced by various other genres. "Bright moon matsuma illumination, Clear Spring Stone upstream". Wang Wei's presentation is not only one of the standards established by Tang poetry that has climbed to the peak of world poetry, but also one of the standards inherited by generations of poets. Pound discovered it in the classical poetry of our country, and he told the Imagists, which in turn told all the schools of the twentieth century—that only when it was presented could it be possible to achieve the image appearance required by poetry. Only when there is an image can poetry be clear, accurate and even clear in expression. Although some masters canceled the image in the late period, the abolition of the image is not the same as abandoning the image, but the masters who have reached the peak of poetry have spiritualized the whole into an image.
The rejection of frivolity is a way for the reader to discover whether the work contains poetry and ideas, and it is also a sign of whether a poet is ultimately qualified to be a poet.
What Han Poetry is facing today is precisely the pallor and powerlessness of the spirit. There is no need to deny that we are in an era of extravagant spirit. The impetuosity of man and the collapse of man's faith have made many poets lack active thinking in the self-consciousness of language and the composition of the relationship between faith reconstruction and poetry, and it is difficult to transcend in self-expression. Whether or not the poet can ultimately achieve transcendence depends on the poet's concern for reality, on the poet's concern for the existence of things as they are. Both drive the poet to strike a balance between moral commitment and aesthetic pleasure, and also drive the poet to get rid of all kinds of artificial noise and commotion and move to his own independence. It also fits exactly what Heaney defines contemporary poetry, "Poetry is a space noticed in the crack between what is about to happen and what we want to happen, and its role is not distraction, but pure concentration, which refocus our attention on ourselves." ”
Focusing on ourselves means that no matter how vast the extension of poetry is, it will never relax the urgent pressure on us, and the greater the pressure, the more it will form a test of whether the poet's mind is mature, in other words, poetry has always been a test. Those who refuse to be tested are bound to degenerate into idle games and toys; those who are tested will inevitably ask the writer: Why do I write this way? Why did I write such a poem?
The problem sounds simple, but beyond simplicity, it can make the person who writes poetry always refuse to tarnish the frivolity of the work. Perhaps, the refusal to be frivolous is the reader's way of discovering whether the work contains poetry and ideas, and it is also a sign of whether a poet is ultimately qualified to be a poet.