What are the skills of modern poetry writing?

Modern poetry refers to the poetry from the May 4th Movement to the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC). The main body of China's modern poetry, New Poetry, was born in the May 4th New Culture Movement. It is a new style poem that adapts to the requirements of the times, reflects real life with the vernacular close to the masses, expresses the revolutionary content of science and democracy, and breaks the shackles of the old style poem with metrical form as the main symbol. 1953 used the name "Modern Poetry Society" for the first time-it was established when Ji Xian founded the "Modern Poetry Society".

Starting from Hu Shi's Pigeon, the creation of modern poetry has been nearly one hundred years. During this century, China's new poetry experienced rapid prosperity, especially since 1980s, many new poetry schools appeared, such as Crossing the River. The rise of modern poetry led to the gradual fading out of the stage of China's literary creation, and formed the first climax of modern poetry creation in the 1920s and 1930s. However, at the beginning of modern poetry, there was no systematic creative theory system and different aesthetic standards, which led to the proliferation and randomness of many new poems and greatly weakened and damaged the image of this style. To this end, Wen Yiduo put forward the idea of "three beauties" of new poetry in the book "The Metre of Poetry" in view of the problems existing in the creation of new poetry at that time. That is, the beauty of music (the beauty of syllables), painting (the beauty of words) and architecture (the symmetry of knots and the uniformity of sentences). This proposition provides a basis for the standardization and rigor of new poetry to some extent.

Later, many ideas such as "Revolutionary Poetry" put forward by the Left League, "National Defense Poetry" during the Anti-Japanese War, and "New Folk Song Movement" put forward by Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art and gradually evolved afterwards appeared. But it is Wen Yiduo's thought of "three beauties" that is really accepted by the public and formed a * * * understanding on the artistic level.

With the progress of the times, the influence of foreign thoughts and the exploration of poets in the new period, Wen Yiduo's proposition of "three beauties" gradually extended more and richer cognition. Some ideas are weakened, such as architectural beauty, while others are emphasized, such as painting beauty. However, there are still some schools that put forward completely different poetic opinions on "three beauties". Because what is discussed here is just some basic contents, I won't go into details.

First, the beauty of music-the rhythm of poetic language

The musical beauty proposed by Wen Yiduo is aimed at the rhythm of new poetry at that time. At that time, due to the left-leaning resistance and subversion of classical Chinese learning, everything that overlapped with classical Chinese learning was avoided as much as possible, such as rhyme, which was ignored by many poetry creators. In the 1920s, Bing Xin wrote Bing Xin's Body based on Japanese flying sentences, which not only promoted the trend of short poems, but also threw the musical sense of poems into the dust heap of history. Poetry at that time, such as the original poems by Liu Bannong and Shen, Goddess by Guo Moruo and Wind of Emblems by Wang Jingzhi, a lakeside poetry club, did not pay attention to the rhythm of poetry. On the one hand, of course, considering the subversion of China classical literature proposed by the New Literature Movement, on the other hand, because the New Literature advocated the return of humanity under the leadership of the Creation Society and the Literature Research Association, the poet demanded to break all the shackles, especially the restrictions on his own creation.

Here we would like to mention by the way that, as Sister Ping said in the last issue, China's classical poetry is very strict with meter, almost harsh. For the new vernacular literature, it is almost impossible to ask it to be straightforward and strictly rhyme. Therefore, in the early days of new poetry creation, poets were proud of breaking the routine. In the twenties and thirties, after ten years of creative upsurge, new poetry became more and more casual, and almost a few words were enough to make it a poem. In this case, Wen Yiduo put forward the beauty of music in "Three Beauties" and strictly followed it in the poetry creation of Crescent Society. For example, in his Dead Water, every sentence rhymes alternately, one after another. Compared with the poetry creation at that time, it can be said to be very rigorous.

Today, especially after the upsurge of poetry creation after the Cultural Revolution, there is no requirement for rhyme in modern poetry creation, but this does not mean that we should return to the almost chaotic and random state of poetry creation in the 1920s. On the contrary, we should learn the theory of "musical beauty" and express it in another way, that is, the sense of rhythm of poetic language. In other words, it is the internal melody of poetic language, that is, the language context.

We look at the masterpieces of modern poetry after the Cultural Revolution, and even the masterpieces of modern poetry in the 1920s and 1930s. Even in the most chaotic period of creation, excellent works are still works with strong sense of rhythm. Such as Hu Shi's "The Dove":

What a beautiful late autumn weather.

There is a pigeon.

Play in the air

Look at them in twos and threes.

walk to and fro

Yi Yi Yi Yi-

suddenly

Turn over and reflect the sun.

White feathers line the sky.

Shifen Li Xian

This is the earliest poem in the history of China's new poetry. When we recite it by ourselves, it is easy to see that this poem has a very distinct vein. No matter from the expression of emotion or from the grammatical structure, we can see that there is always a rhythm of two or four words falling. After the split, we can see more clearly:

What a beautiful late autumn weather!

There is a pigeon.

Play in the air

Look at them in twos and threes.

| Back and forth |

| Easy as Italy |-

suddenly

| Turn it over and reflect the sunlight |

White feathers line the sky.

| Very beautiful |

It can be seen here that from the first line, the rhythm of four words has been formed, which accounts for the theme of the whole poem. We know that four-word rice is the most acceptable rhythm than reading. For example, the four-sentence pattern of a thousand-character essay, the four-sentence pattern of a parallel prose, and the rhythm of four-sentence patterns in many epigrams are also adopted, all for the convenience of reading and reading at the same time. Just like this song "Dove", I believe many friends can recite it now. If the rhythm of the whole poem is different, or changes greatly, and there is no fixed and traceable law, then the poem will appear fragmented in the context, and the author's intentions and emotions will not be easily reflected in the reading process.

To cultivate a good sense of rhythm, a sense of language is very important and can be trained from reading on weekdays. You can read more and read more, combined with the emotion given by the author in the language. From ancient poetry to classic modern poetry. Poetry recitation is a good practice method. Poetry is the most difficult and essential style. If poetry can be written well, then other styles will naturally not be bad.

As for how to achieve a sense of rhythm in our writing, I think if we deliberately ask for words or grammar, it will not only interrupt poetry, but also appear dull. As far as my experience is concerned, when you create, you should completely integrate your feelings into the language. If you have the sense of language mentioned above, while writing, your feelings will float up, covering the surface of the language and guiding everyone to find the rhythm inside the language.

A good poem doesn't just stay on the surface of language. This does not mean that a good poem is flowery in rhetoric and strict in rhythm. Writing poems is like Nu Wa creating people, and clay figurines are clay figurines no matter how realistic they are. If you want to be a man, you need to be endowed with a soul. And the soul we give to poetry is the emotion when we create it. This kind of emotion is not very mysterious, but tangible and qualitative, attached to the rhythm of poetic language, flowing out with the context and infecting readers. What can move people is good poetry. It is this sense of language that moves people.

Second, the beauty of painting-the image and language of poetry

Wen Yiduo put forward the beauty of painting, aiming at the coarseness and vulgarity of some poetic languages at that time, that is, the current saliva poems, junk poems or lower body poems. As we all know, poetry is the most refined and essential style. The language of poetry is naturally more demanding. It's one thing not to be redundant, and it's also one thing to choose words and make sentences succinctly. So how do we turn the language we write into the language of poetry?

Use of images

We know that the so-called image is the artistic image created by the objective image through the unique emotional activities of the creative subject. To put it simply, image is an image with meaning, and it is an objective image used to entrust subjective feelings. That is, the combination of subjective "meaning" and objective "image", that is, the "object image" integrated into the poet's thoughts and feelings, is a concrete image endowed with some special meaning and literary meaning.

The use of images, pay attention to not seeking the shape, but seeking the spirit. In other words, we don't seek objective, realistic and accurate appearances, but seek the tacit understanding of inner charm. Of course, all this is best within the acceptable range of public thinking; Or, unless it's emotional, try to avoid some grandstanding images, such as lower body poetry and junk pie. I won't delve into it here.

Such as Wen Yiduo's Confessions:

"I won't lie to you, I'm not a poet,

Even though I love the loyalty of Baishi,

Pine trees and the sea, crows carry the sunset on their backs,

Bat wings are woven in the dusk.

You know I like heroes and mountains.

I like the national flag flying in the wind.

From goose yellow to bronze chrysanthemum.

Remember that my food is a pot of bitter tea!

But there is another me. Are you scared? —

Thoughts crawl like flies in the trash can. "

We connect several groups of images added in the article in series, and we can see that the "fly" and "trash can" at the back are not in harmony with the previous groups of images. It is not difficult to realize the patriotic feelings of the author's complicated confession and self-dissection.

In some schools, the use of images will go to two extremes, that is, writing without images or obscure elements, and poetry without images, such as pear-shaped parts, which is beyond our discussion. Poems written by elements generally appear in long poems, such as Haizi's Seven Books on the Sun. In fact, element writing can be divided into two situations. One is that the author is completely arty and scribble, and may not know what he wants to express. The other is that, like Haizi, he has his own complete and clear world outlook system, and the image elements have clear and fixed instructions. Such poets often have comments on their own works, or have people who know how to change poets to interpret them. For example, Eliot's The Waste Land, the poet himself added a lot of notes; Another example is Haizi's Poetics: An Outline, which is annotated in detail with his Sun Land as an example. At present, poetry creation does not need to reach this level deliberately, because of the problem of skill, it is easy to draw a tiger instead of a dog. In our creation, we should first pay attention to the choice of images, try to choose appropriate, accurate and aesthetic images, and avoid grandstanding. The more daily, the more moved. What is said here is very simple, but you need to put it into practice in your daily creation.

Organization of language

As we know, poetry is the most refined style, which focuses on expressing the deepest feelings or thoughts in the shortest space. Many poets can develop the language art of poetry to the extreme, and just a few words can give people unlimited thinking space. As a beginner in poetry, you don't need to reach the connotation beyond the length of the language, but at least you should reduce the wasted space on the surface of the text.

How to do it specifically? Let's look at it from a grammatical point of view.

A good poem should at least make every word indescribable The limited space of poetry determines that every word has a reason to appear in its present position, and words without reason can never stay.

Reflected in grammar. First of all, unless it is meaningful, try to avoid using conjunctions, such as: because, so, then, later, so … and so on. Poetry is jumping. If you can't jump, delete all the conjunctions, and then you can fly.

Secondly, don't use words that are necessary or unnecessary. Poetry is different from other styles (of course, other styles also have the same principle), which requires a lot of space and words, is meaningless, or sentences that can be replaced by shorter words are cumbersome, which can only distract readers and dilute the expression of feelings. If you don't know to what extent the language of poetry needs to be streamlined, you can look at "Sun City Notes" by North Island. Of course, for beginners, it is not so strict. Consciously controlling your writing is a great progress, which is enough to distinguish the boundary between diary mood and poetry.

Of course, some poets are used to long sentences and many lines. However, careful observation shows that most of those excellent poems are long in length, but there are few parts that can be deleted. On the one hand, these long sentences conform to the context in promoting emotional development, on the other hand, they are reasonable in composition arrangement.

Third, use less personal words and adverbs; Use more nouns and adjectives. Actually, this is an unwritten rule. We can see that a good poem, especially a good poem written by the post-80s generation, rarely has such words as "you, me and him", and rarely uses adverbs such as very, very, special and extreme. As the poet Southern Yan told me, "I love you" or "I love you very much", which is more touching, there is no need to say anything.

As for the use of nouns and adjectives, it refers to the objective expression of the picture or scene that this poem wants to convey to readers. Objectivity does not mean that feelings are not brought in. On the contrary, before this scene or picture appears in your mind, you should first integrate the creator's feelings into it and form the initial impression in your mind with the participation of feelings. In the process of expression, it is not trying to impress people through words, but through the sense of picture, plot and rhythm, which is ruthless but moving. This is a lofty ideal. Maybe I'm being more general and abstract. Let's take a look at the seventh song in Nie Luda's Twenty Love Poems and a Despair Song:

Looking down at dusk, I put away my sad net.

Sprinkle it in your ocean-like eyes.

There, it burns and spreads on the highest bonfire.

My loneliness, it waves its arms like a drowning man.

I send a red signal to your lost eyes.

Just like the sea with a lighthouse beating against the coast.

You keep silent, my distant lover.

From your eyes, you always show the coast of panic.

Looking down at dusk, I put away my sad net.

Shake your eyes like an ocean.

Groups of night birds pecked at the first stars.

They twinkle like my heart that loves you.

The night god galloped away on his black horse.

Sow blue flowers on the Yuan Ye.

Looking at this poem, we are easily moved by its rich colors and unrestrained imagination, and the loneliness, sadness and fanatical love in the text also flow out with the progress of the scene and infect us.

Analyzing the language of this poem, we can see that only "sad net" and "my loneliness" run through it, and they exist here as nouns, laying the tone for the whole poem and pointing out the direction for the divergence of feelings. There are no adverbs in the whole poem, and the only adverb component is "Like a drowning man" in the second line of the second section. Here we can see that even if it is used as an adverb, it is a very vivid adverb. Compared with "very, very" or "lonely and helpless" that we may use, "like a drowning person" not only vividly depicts my helplessness and despair.

Nie Luda is my favorite foreign poet. Due to translation problems, we can only absorb the nutrition of foreign poems from the structure and philosophy, and Nie Luda's poems can still have such fatal attraction even after translation, which is inseparable from his sense of picture and color. Before being conveyed to readers, the scene images have been processed and infected by the author's own emotions, thus avoiding the dependence on the text. Simple language can be translated, and gorgeous language can also be translated, which will not have much impact. Nie Luda's poems tell us that poetry can also be the common language of all mankind.

Finally, the most easily overlooked point is to choose words according to the emotional main line of poetry. This may be a bit empty. Specifically, if the last sentence is reached, the mood of the poem is explosive, that is, the last climax. Such a poem needs short notes and firm efforts to complete; However, if the artistic conception of a poem gradually advances and cools after reaching the climax, such as a lyric poem with multiple paragraphs and parallelism, it is best to end with a continuous flat voice and gentle strength to achieve the effect of lingering sound. Of course, it doesn't have to be like this, just an example. In the process of refining words, phonetic factors should also be taken into account. Of course, the premise is not to pursue language deliberately, which will make poetry look artificial. It took me a long time to understand this little trick, which may not be suitable for everyone, but it is really effective to use the phonetic effects of words to promote the progress of poetry, but it is easily overlooked.

Third, the beauty of architecture-the branch skills of poetry and others

Wen Yiduo first put forward the idea of "architectural beauty", and advocated a new metrical poem with a fixed number of lines and words in each section, and two sentences before and after each section alternately rhymed or rhymed. After the appearance of the new metrical poem, it was carried forward by Xu Zhimo and Wen Yiduo. Feng Zhi's other sonnet took over the banner of metrical poem, but eventually compromised with the free body. Even Xu Zhimo, a cadre of the Crescent Society, rarely followed the style of new metrical poems in his later works. The "architectural beauty" we are talking about here is certainly not the "architectural beauty" advocated by Wen Yiduo at the beginning, but refined into a branch of poetry.

Among those who attack modern poetry, one thing is the most striking, that is, modern poetry is divided into paragraphs casually, which makes people unable to understand. The person who said this obviously did not seriously contact and study modern poetry in depth. For a long time, the branches of modern poetry are very particular, not to mention the refinement of modern poetry language can not be said casually. Let's analyze some basic viewpoints of the branch of modern poetry:

According to the logical branch of thinking

This is the simplest and most common way to divide the line. One line of poetry is a logical process of thinking, and there is an obvious logical boundary between the next line of poetry and the previous line of poetry. This is the most common among beginners, and it is also common among foreign poets before the 20th century. Such as Shelley's Autumn: Corona Hector:

1

The sun lost its warmth, and the wind wailed sadly.

Dead trees sigh, pale flowers wither,

A year is coming,

Lying in her dying bed-on the ground, dead leaves.

Have come around.

Come on, come out, season,

From 1 1 month to May,

Put on sad clothes

Send a funeral to a cold year,

Like a wandering ghost guarding her grave again.

2

Rain is flying, cold-shrinking larvae are crawling,

Everything is for the year of death: the river overflows and the thunder rumbles.

Constantly wailing;

The happy swallow flew away and the lizard came back.

Their holes;

Come on, come out, season,

Let beautiful sisters play music;

Covered with white, black and dark gray,

Following the year of death,

I shed tears to make the cemetery green.

Because it is more common, I won't repeat it here.

Branch by context

This is a higher skill in poetry creation. The context problem we mentioned earlier is not only realized by the grammatical rhythm of vocabulary, but also by branching. For example, there is a disparity in the number of words between poems, or there are too many contents, and the emotional density is unevenly distributed. You can cut a line into two lines through branches. Such a branch needs a high sense of language and a good command of language. If the segmentation is good, there will be no trace. If the segmentation is not good, the whole poem will become fragmented and the words will be awkward. If necessary, lubrication and guidance are required after cutting. For example, Gomez's "Gale":

Clear day, black rain, heavy rain, fate.

The clouds of the legion, the clouds of maple leaves, and a tall building are dangerously towering.

The sheep's dish on the yuan leaf rolled into a whirlpool.

The wind on the ground, the wind in the sky, a great coat wailing on the mountain.

Shaking in the cloud vortex is a green heart.

Looking at a dark cloud is an empty shell of a soul.

Autumn wind across the wilderness, only half exposed.

Dark clouds, where the sun grows.

A man stood by the river in the autumn chill.

A neurotic person, a down-and-out person, an out-of-touch person

He met night and time in his heart.

Meet a deer with hemoptysis on the spider web, and meet a broad mind.

A man standing in the wind, his heart is split in two.

Divide into two halves, half on the river bank and the other half on the river bank.

Unprecedented wind, like heavy snow falling in the night, he is in his heart.

I saw a man walking past another man in the snow.

Oh, the Chinese tunic suit of God, from your four pockets.

The wind flew out like four panthers.

The house that eats corn eats the rich snow bones of the manor.

Plunder trees, plunder the teeth of the earth, plunder quarries.

Two nights come together, one riding the other.

A paralytic was groggily tearing at his stomach in the heavy snow.

There is a stomach, chestnuts and fire under the armor.

The biggest head has reached the peak of madness.

This poem pays more attention to language skills. Let's see:

He met night and time in his heart.

Meet a deer with hemoptysis on the spider web, and meet a broad mind.

A man standing in the wind, his heart is split in two.

Divide into two halves, half on the river bank and the other half on the river bank.

Unprecedented wind, like heavy snow falling in the night, he is in his heart.

I saw a man walking past another man in the snow.

Here, there is no need to "split in two" at the beginning of the fourth line, but in that case, the transition between branches will be mediocre. On the one hand, adding a "half-and-half" here will cause the number of words in the fourth line to be roughly equal to that in the past, and the context of the fourth line will present a soothing, heavy and desolate atmosphere when reading; On the other hand, in the process of reading, the line of sight stays here for a longer time. The two arias emphasize this "split into two" and give people a macro feeling of the poem's desolate, lonely and contradictory mentality from the details.

Another example is the amazing "Starry Sky Watching in Hargil":

There is a mystery that you can't control.

You can only be a bystander.

Let the mysterious power.

Send a signal from a distance

Let the light pass through your heart.

Like tonight, in Hargil.

In this desolate place far from the city

On the Tibetan Plateau

Next to a train station the size of a broad bean

I look up at the stars.

The couple are silent and have thin wings.

The grass grows wildly towards the stars.

The horse forgot to fly.

The wind blows the empty night, blowing me.

The wind blows the future and the past.

I became a person, a room.

A hut with an oil lamp burning.

The cold roof of this hut.

Stepped into the altar by billions of feet of stars

I'm like a child taking communion.

Enlarge courage, but hold your breath.

In this poem, lines 34, 789 and 167 are the same and interrupted by the context, but a vague intertextuality is still used here, for example, lines 7 and 8 are interrupted, and "place" is placed before line 8, on the one hand, to emphasize the modification of this "place" by the upper and lower lines. On the other hand, it also uses the intertextuality skills in ancient poems to tell readers that this "place" is far from the city, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, next to a railway station the size of a broad bean. Similarly, the break of lines 16 and 17, on the one hand, is the consideration of the number of words per line, on the other hand, the "humble oil lamp" is a separate line, which is also an emphasis and cohesion. From this, we can see the poetic logic: I = humble room-altar trampled by stars-like a child receiving communion, nervous, pious but excited. And this is also the focus of this poem.

According to the branch of philosophy

This technique, which often appears in philosophical poems, is usually manifested in the separation of the whole image, which creates a huge imagination space and philosophical thinking through the separation of the text, thus forming a huge tension. Such poems are difficult to write, and it is also difficult to be accepted when written, especially the images chosen are not common. It is not recommended for novices to try it because it is suspicious.

Ma Rumei's short poem Bird Cage;

open

bird cage

about

door

Let the birds fly

go to

Put freedom

recover

bird

prison

At first glance, many people will say that this poem is a poem. But if we look closely, we will find that such a branch is very particular. With simple actions or morphemes, the content of each line is simple and pure. This is in sharp contrast with the aesthetic pursuit of many other poems. The aesthetic pursuit of poetry is poetic ambiguity, which gives images or languages the possibility of multiple understanding. Of course, it's not that the latter is not good, but the latter also has excellent works, such as North Island's Let's Go. However, for the category of philosophical poetry, poems such as non-horses can undoubtedly mobilize readers to make a second creation in the process of text acceptance.

Let's see:

Let the birds fly

go to

Here, flying and walking, separated by two paragraphs, are completely beyond what we call "flying away". "Fei" can be used as a verb or an adverbial; "Zou" can be used as both a verb and an adverbial. Even because there is another line, the subject of "walking" has many possibilities, which can be a bird, itself or both.

Put freedom

recover

bird

prison

The released object can also be a bird, a cage or both. This possibility is the theme of the poem. Of course, this is only a rough interpretation. Digging deeper, this poem will have infinite possibilities. Ma Fei commented on this poem twice in his later years. The first time he changed it to "still free/sky/sky", and the second time he changed it to "birdcage is also sky". Of course, this is beside the point.