Wrote life into a lyric poem
Preface: Song Chengzhi "Listening to the Rain in the Villa".
Ma Qidai. The poet Song Chengzhi is a person who wrote his life into a lyrical poem. Although I personally have not done such lyricism for a long time, when I was studying in college in the 80s of the 20th century, I saw Mr. Ye Wenfu's "The Male Sun" and read it repeatedly, and my blood was boiling, and I wrote heroic and majestic youth poems. Therefore, when I read Brother Song's poems, I felt that there was a long-lost passion for life hidden in his sonorous and high-pitched poems, which awakened many memories of my youth. Brother Song is ten years older than me, and his consistent singing, from youth to the threshold of antiquity, really needs to come from true love and pious dedication.
In his body, there is a vast artistic blood and aesthetic spirit opened by He Jingzhi and Guo Xiaochuan, and there is a clear mark of the times. In the past 40 years, modern Chinese poetry, which started from the "Today's School", has gradually become the mainstream of the poetry world, and the Song Chengzhi brothers are loyal to their favorite poetry art and spiritual source, deeply engaged in the exploration and improvement of their own art, and their insistence on inheriting and carrying forward the spirit and will, compared with those writers who blindly chase the new trend with the trend of the times, compared with those pseudo-pioneers who have lost their roots and lost themselves, they have their own precious and worthy of affirmation. Therefore, I think that Song Chengzhi is not a follower, has strong concentration, is not vain, is honest as a person and composes, and belongs to a poet who integrates poetry and people. This was the first important impression I had of him and his writing.
Since it is an anthology for many years, poetry is the poet's extraordinary form, a poetic record of his life, including the poet's life pursuit and life interest. As mentioned earlier, Song Chengzhi's brother and poetry are highly integrated, so people and poetry can prove each other. He is sensitive to the times, close to the society, passionate, poetry like fire, although it is along the Acura all the way, but so far has not been mixed with false ingredients, so the poetry is flowing with true feelings, behind the words is sincerity. I often say that poetry is the ultimate art, and in this sense, "truth" is the soul of art, with which one can transcend the constraints of artistic concepts and obtain the rationality of existence. Even if the text comes from a poet with a completely different spiritual structure and value perception, it will resonate with different times and different readers. Brother Song Chengzhi's consistency for decades proves the fundamental role of "truth" in poetics. This is the second important impression I made about him and his writing.
In this way, looking at his poetry collection composed of "achievements", "animals", "landscapes", "history", "emotions" and "characters", it is like listening to a high-pitched and agitated poetic symphony. Although he has chosen a completely different ideological and spiritual path from Ye Wenfu's "The Male Sun", it is a slice of the times, because Song Chengzhi is based on the real feeling of the unity of poetry and people, and continues the artistic source of the deep integration of ideological discourse formed since 1942, and in another sense, it has also become a poetic evidence of reality and the writing of history. If this point is considered in the balance of Sartre's "intervention in literature", Miłosz's "testimony of poetry" and the "poetics of poetic evidence" that I have always practiced, poets and works like Song Chengzhi have added a rich connotation of "poetic witness". This is the third important impression I made about him and his writing.
In fact, there is another impression that is also very important, that is, he has been committed to the practical pursuit of the best nature and rhythmic beauty of new poetry writing. Yes, Wen Yiduo's idea of "three beauties" must have become Song Chengzhi's conscious pursuit, because He Jingzhi's ladder poems were formal experiments under the influence of Mayakovsky. What interests me is that Song Chengzhi not only drew nourishment from He Jingzhi and Guo Xiaochuan, but he was also deeply immersed in classical poetics and received greater inspiration. As he himself said, he started from the art of rapping, combined with the characteristics of the art of recitation, and constantly comprehended and explored the effect of the "Thirteen Great Ruts" in the writing of new poems, especially in his use of rut rhyme, whether it is Fahua, Middle East or oil seeking ......, whether it is interlaced rhyme or rhyme to the end, has made him develop a very rigorous writing consciousness and strict self-discipline in the choice of words and sentences, those poems that seem to gush out and stretch naturally, are all the crystallization of his painstaking boiling. This undoubtedly makes us go back and reflect on the eternal topic of old and new poetry, tradition and modernity.
I don't know why Brother Song Chengzhi called this collection of poems "Listening to the Rain in the Mountain Villa", which first made me think of the quietness of the mountain villa, the leisurely and leisurely sound of the rain, and then Li Shangyin's Bashan night rain that contains infinite loneliness and nostalgia. When I read this collection of poems, I couldn't help but be a little surprised, it turned out that these feelings and imaginations of mine were almost incompatible with the melody and aesthetics presented in this poetry collection. How can the silence and loneliness be in harmony with the poem "Passion, burning the heart frantically, beating wildly" ("Ah, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge"). Perhaps, this is the deep meaning of Brother Song Chengzhi. He hides a classical aesthetic manor in his chest, and he faces the outside world and is willing to express his excitement, pleasure, happiness and joy with a modern, high-decibel singing voice. Whether he saw the achievements of social construction, discovered beautiful landscapes, or met outstanding characters, he did not hesitate to write with all his heart, and did not seem to hesitate or reserve the slightest. Such a person is lovely, and perhaps this is one of my important impressions of him and his writing.
Brother Song was recommended to me by my poet brother Wang Dexing. Brother Dexing is a military poet and my hometown brother, he was treated warmly when I first came to Beijing in 2016, and I also took the opportunity to get acquainted with several poets around him, and later became friends. Song Chengzhi's brother is the sixth generation of Yang's Taiji, and his poetry is also quite proud. I guess that's why they became friends. People interact with each other, and in the end, Brother Song asked me to be the preface, and I actually accepted it. Of course, there is a lot to say, and I look forward to the day when we get together over a drink, because there is still a lot of things to say. Some should be saved until the wine is hot.
Right for the order! Ma Qidai, poet, poetry critic, advocate of "writing for conscience", editor-in-chief of Chinese poetry, and editor-in-chief of Changhe Literary Series.