Tong Xiaoxi
Although he has been bedridden for a long time, he has always paid attention to the works of the authors of the Greater China branch of the International Chinese Writers Association, and recently, the writers and poets of the Xinjiang branch in western China have sprung up and cannot help but make people look at it.
I was impressed by several poets of the Xinjiang branch of the Chinese Association, such as Xiang Ying, Zhang Juan, Meimei, Han Bing, Han Shengming, Jia Yu, Huang Wenjiang, Hongyu, Liang Yin, etc. I recommended Liang Yin's works a long time ago, when he was in the Gansu branch of the Chinese Association, and the reason for recommending his works was that he was different from the works of most poets, especially in his writing posture and the values he upheld—he did not blindly follow the shadow of other western poets, nor did he write about the decadence and desolation of the great northwest like some western poets in the past.
I still like the works of writers and poets of the Xinjiang Branch, because their literary creations are outward-looking, that is, they attach great importance to the value of goodness and love, and they also pay more attention to social reality, have a strong sense of morality and morality, and have a rare and valuable spirit of enlightenment.
Advocating beautiful humanity and morality is the theme that Western poets attach importance to, their poems are always full of pure and simple emotions, this is the topic I often talk about in the first chapter of poetry, the charm and wisdom of poetry is not in its skills and rhetoric, but in whether it has a sense of truth, and to be more specific, that is, poetry works are the same as other literary genres, writing and rhetorical skills are just a very basic thing, in essence, no matter any literary work, if there is no poetic simplicity and innocence, Without warm kindness and love, no moral force and no ethical content, no matter what kind of unfathomable skill and rhetoric the work shows, it is worthless.
The lack of human touch is a common disease in the works of contemporary poets, and the illness is not light, and the poets themselves have never had a truly full and happy life experience, so how can readers have a sympathetic life experience? As for the experience of life, it is a kind of luxury, because from the works of most contemporary poets, we can see a mentality of literature being gamified, and the game master school seems to have become a very popular label on contemporary poets, as if to tell everyone that if you can't play, you are not a poet, and if you don't play well, you are not a real poet, so how can we get the experience of life in the works of this kind of "poet"? How can a person who doesn't even want to recognize and follow such a simple truth as the function of writing can benefit his spirit? How can a selfish writer get a real life and a deep experience of beautiful emotions from their work?
Fortunately, I can still feel the long-lost emotional experience from the works of contemporary western poets, such as Han Shengming's "Snow Messes with Steps": "I looked for the footsteps of my parents and fell like snow so white that people couldn't open their eyes.......""It is so clear that it seems that I can see the soul of the poet, and it is no exaggeration to say that only those who are rooted in the soil, who work hard with their hands, can experience the true beauty of life, and this feeling is by no means something that can be obtained out of thin air. This poem recalls the scene of cleaning the house before the Chinese New Year when the parents were in the past, and now the father is gone, and the mother is also old, but their simplicity, kindness and gentleness will always remain in the depths of the poet's heart.
The poet Jiayu's poems are a bit idealistic, but this ideal contains a touching moral force, in the poem "Winter Language" there is a sense of reality, natural and plain human feelings: "For the grass and trees, their dialogue with the snow can travel through the infinite to retain the acceptance and achievements of the world, and I, I am more willing to listen to everything", the author writes that the ordinary but extremely extraordinary in the natural world, this extraordinary is the simplicity that people should have, as well as the strength of personality and moral spirit, and the tolerance of the world, Selfless sacrifice and altruism seem to be a ruthless thing, but it is the most affectionate thing in the world, and this kind of great love can only be possessed by others.
The poet Xiang Ying's poems are very textured, and there is a calm and sober sense of "bottom", and I have always advocated that our writers in the Chinese Association should have this kind of consciousness of writing for the weak and for the low, because it is a reliable and valuable writing position, which is a prerequisite for becoming a real writer or a real poet. For example, the poem "Sparrow" by Xiang Ying: "The viscera fed with grains is like a temple standing above the earthly world, sowing the seeds of pleasure, dispelling all the gloom and coldness, and making the bright light of the heart and the sky brighter and brighter", this metaphor is actually to praise the wisdom, kindness and altruistic spirit of the people at the bottom. In the countryside, sparrows are actually annoying things, poets do not write sparrows for the sake of writing sparrows, and to write about annoying sparrows so noble and great is to praise the working people at the bottom, who are not backward and ignorant people, but people who have always lived truthfully and silently dedicated their strength, although they are insignificant in the eyes of most people, but they are the greatest people.
Reading the poems of Zhang Juan, Hongyu, Beauty, Han Bing, and Liang Yin, it seems that they all have a relatively close choice of "theme", the poets all live in the west, and they all pay attention to real life, especially the complex and subtle experience of ordinary people's hearts, and the poets deeply feel the ordinary people's desire for warmth and love, their attachment to the land and homeland, the fear of self-esteem and dignity when they are hurt, the gratitude to others, etc., and the poet carefully mends these subtle emotions for them through brushstrokes, and protects them.
Such as the cold ice "One Night of Cold Snow Promotes the Fragrance of Plums": "When a tree of red plum blossoms overflows with the fragrance of white snow, the overture of spring will be played"; For example, the beautiful "Winter Payment": "The hymn of winter has been completed, this is a new life given to winter rhyme"; For example, Hongyu's "The years are sharper than the cold wind": "Loneliness is lush, compared to the coming spring, the past is like the wind, and the years are sharper than the cold wind"; For example, Zhang Juan's "Dialogue Across Time": "The silent grass extends in the gap of the sun, and the wind and sand blow down, and also crush the tears ......of the deceased".and so on, all of which are introspective and tranquil, simple, and innocent, and the poems construct a silent mood to listen to the deep reverberations of others.
A study of some of the above-mentioned poets' poetic works shows that they like to use symbolism, which is also a common expression technique in the rhetorical art of poetry, that is, to show a certain abstract concept similar to it through a specific or specific image, and its function is to imply the theme and convey the poet's thoughts and feelings. This is a more complex form of conscious representation in the rhetorical art of poetry, which may require some psychological foundation. The poet will take the appearance of one or more concrete things as an objective counterpart, and consciously associate them together, establish a set of "equations" of thoughts and feelings, and write only about themselves, without any explanation, leaving it to the reader to perceive the meaning implied by the symbol, and reveal the answer. Symbolism can not only inspire the reader's association, but also increase the capacity of the poem, constructing a broad and deep artistic conception.
Unlike many contemporary avant-garde poets, avant-garde poets dare to be original and keen to avoid the common and seek the new, so this kind of deliberate artificiality can easily make the poem obscure, and even make the reader puzzled, and make the poem itself lose its meaning. Avant-garde poets focus on rendering the experience of personal desire, focusing on fancy rhetorical skills, while the works of western poets are characterized by being too straightforward, that is, boldly speaking, and do not like to be hidden, and the so-called "concealment" is in the eyes of many contemporary poets is the technical roundness and rhetorical maturity of the broad poetic sense and realm, but too much pursuit of poetic form and rhetorical art, it is easy to fall into the mode of reproduction writing, and the writing of many contemporary poets has almost fallen into this mudflat. It seems to be familiar and similar to each other, and it is difficult to form your own poetic language and poetic style.
In fact, I prefer the content of healthy morality, as well as the simple emotions in these contents, and straightforwardness is also a rhetorical device, but it depends on whether it appears just right, whether it appears just right in the structure of a poem. The evaluation of literary works is by no means a test of literary style and rhetorical skills, nor of quantity, but of quality, and whether there is a profound ideological content.
Written in Delingha on 31 January 2024.