How to write modern poetry and how to be a poem?

Poetry is a literary style, which focuses on expressing the poet's thoughts and feelings. However, emotion is not poetry. From emotion to poetry, there is a concrete externalization process, which is not only the image construction process of "harmony between meaning and image", but also the artistic conception creation process of "harmony between thinking and environment" Whether a poem has poetic flavor or not, in the final analysis, depends on whether the poem has beautiful and ingenious images. Whether a poem has a unique charm depends on whether it has an aesthetic mood of blending scene and reality. Image and artistic conception are two terms often used by poets and critics when writing poems. However, in several authoritative writing textbooks, such as Writing published by East China Normal University Press, Advanced Course of Writing published by Wuhan University Press, and even the quite authoritative New Draft of Writing, there is a very coincidental situation: the creation of artistic conception is emphasized, while the creation and analysis of images are downplayed, and some even fail to put forward the concept of "image" in the whole chapter. For famous works, it is normal for viewers to be attracted and infected by the "artistic conception" in the works. In other words, it is understandable to emphasize the artistic conception of a work from the perspective of literary history or appreciation. However, writing textbooks are not dedicated to reappearing literary historical facts or appreciating works, but to let students master the necessary writing theories, understand the basic writing rules of common styles, and exercise their writing skills in common styles. In common stylistic writing, poetry writing is difficult for teachers to teach students, especially the "poems" carefully created by many students. It is tasteless in the eyes of experts, and a simple conclusion is "unlike poetry"! Where does poetry come from? What is the key to writing poetry? What is the relationship between artistic conception and image? This article now discusses these issues-once discussed, it is inevitable that the words of one family are biased. Please correct me. General textbooks believe that the focus of poetry writing lies in the creation of artistic conception, and the beauty of artistic conception makes poetry full of charm. I think the focus of poetry writing should be the combination of images, which are cleverly chosen, naturally combined with each other, integrated and unique in natural artistic conception. In the final analysis, the choice of images should be the first in poetry writing, and artistic conception is a kind of overall connotation presented after the whole poem is written. That is, the starting point is in the image and the end point is in the artistic conception. The poetic image is not like it, but whether it is poetic, and poetry comes from the image; Whether a poem is beautiful or not depends on whether it has meaning, which comes from artistic conception. From poetic flavor to poetic beauty, it is actually the excavation process from image to artistic conception. Without images, artistic conception becomes passive water and rootless wood. In the process of poetry creation, the poet always feels particularly touched by a phenomenon in life, produces a strange feeling and gets the first image, which often becomes the core image to be produced in this poem. How did this first image come into being? From the specific writing practice. There are two ways to write ordinary poems: one is to have emotional thoughts before using things skillfully, which is called the materialization of emotional thoughts; The other is that the poet first sees something and then expresses his will with it, which is called the emotionalization of things. Whether the image has penetrating power depends on the efforts of "materialization of emotions" and "emotionalization of objects". It's wonderful that things are integrated with me, but it's hard to attract readers' attention when things are separated. Therefore, for poets, instead of painstakingly looking for unsatisfied inspiration, it is better to focus on capturing delicious and perishable images. Image is not the patent of modern poetry. Si Kongtu, a poetry critic in the Tang Dynasty, said: "Imagination is natural and strange." Hu Yingli also said: "The beauty of ancient poetry lies in seeking images." It can be seen that image art is the tradition of China's poetry, and creatively carrying forward this tradition is the conscious aesthetic pursuit and artistic tendency of contemporary poets. Simply put, image is the image in people's mind, a unique image created by the objective image through the poet's emotional activities, and a concrete artistic image with more subjective colors, which is different from the original state of life and can be perceived by people. Images generally appear in two forms in literary works, namely, single images and whole images. The single image is the most basic artistic image in literary works, and the whole image is an organic whole picture composed of a group or a string of images, also known as the image system. For example, in Ma Zhiyuan's Tianjingsha Qiu Si, "dead vine", "old tree" and "heartbroken man at the end of the world" are all single images, and people often regard this image as a part of a larger realm. They can't leave the whole. If they leave, the single image will lose its original meaning. For example, once Kuteng left Tianjingsha Qiu Si, Kuteng lost the sad color given to it by this Sanqu. Therefore, in this sense, Ma Zhiyuan's Tianjingsha Qiu Si has only one overall image. Image is the focus of poetry writing. Image is the soul of poetic art, where there is image, there is poetic flavor, and without image, there is no poetic flavor. Therefore, poetry writing should avoid both intentional images and unintentional images. For example, a poem "Diligence" published in a certain publication can be described as intentional or unintentional: "Genius is accompanied by diligence/success is linked with hard work/don't expect luck/don't wait for tomorrow/leave it to fate. This is the creed of lazy people/grasp life, and it is also the motto of diligent people." This kind of poem is just straightforward in general philosophy, lacking concrete symbols, ignoring images and not talking about images. Therefore, a little motto like "Pride makes people lag behind, modesty makes people progress" is acceptable as a motto, but it is really not a poem. Gorky put it well: "True poetry, even with a little philosophy, is always ashamed of what is reasonable." In another case, a poem says, "A smooth mirror/an image reflecting an object/a girl's smiling face/an old man's eyes." Others shouted shrimp: "bending over is by no means a respect for people." Chant to the goat cloud: "A beard that stands up doesn't mean you are old." They all only know things, don't know the meaning of sustenance, and lack poetry and painting. At best, it is only an explanation of the unique form of things, and it is a superficial work without profound meaning. Therefore, if there is an image, it is unintentional. In the final analysis, it is superficial or ignored. Meaning is the theme of poetry and the core of artistic conception. This kind of meaning is not the meaning of idea, but the meaning of interest. That is, after the materialization of emotions, what you see is what you can hear and feel. Just like the image in the poem, it is not a purely objective description of the scenery, but an "image" after emotional thinking. The idea is high, not vulgar, and the image is simple and kind, but not too subtle. This kind of discretion is really difficult to grasp. Therefore, ancient Fei Jingyu said: "Poetry is as expensive as shallow, but not as expensive as deep." Therefore, poetry should have a new meaning in the description of very ordinary objects, so that people can understand it at a glance, but it is memorable. Han Han's "Weight" is like this: she put her bloody head/on the balance of life/let all survivors/lose weight. "A Balance of Life" weighs the proportion of Zhang Zhixin's violent life and highlights the unique shocking power of her death, which is more important than Mount Tai. Comparing a person with all beggars, the contrast formed strongly penetrates into the reader's heart through the "balance". Its image is clear and profound, although the system is small, it can win with extremely strong emotional content, which is called "winning more with less". It's also the subject of the mirror. The above example is specious, but Li Xiuyan's mirror has jumped out of the natural attribute of the mirror, expanded imagination and association, and has a far-reaching idea: "The mirror of history is the fairest/if you are afraid of it/if you drop it, it will break-/it will become thousands of pairs of eyes ..." From the natural attribute of the mirror to the history of mankind, the symbolic meaning of "history is a fair judge" is extracted from the image of the mirror. Another example is Lin Lan's sonnet "Umbrella": "When you open your heart to others/others are thinking/how to hold your handle" and "Football" written by a student: "I thought I was smooth/didn't want to be kicked by others." Everything is vivid and its meaning is faintly visible. The images in these poems have reached the realm of "the unity of things and me" and "the unity of mind and things". The poems are full of charm and are undoubtedly excellent works. Poetry creation is inseparable from images. Image selection is the first step, and image combination is the second step. Image combination refers to the phenomenon or image of objective things triggering the author's inspiration, and the author captures the main image. On this basis, he further mobilized the accumulation of life, expanded the imagination and association of "between God and things", made subjective thoughts and feelings blend with various objects and images in objective life, gradually reached unity, and created the artistic realm of "harmony of artistic conception" while sketching the whole poem. Image combination must focus on the creation of poetic beauty, which is determined by the characteristics of poetic artistic expression. The so-called artistic conception refers to an artistic realm produced by describing the life picture of the work and the poet's subjective aesthetic emotion through the combination of images. It is the overall image of the combination of scene and reality, which can induce and open up rich aesthetic imagination space. In other words, artistic conception is the advanced form of image and the aesthetic crystallization of the specific application of typical literary principles in poetry creation, which enables readers to gain a broader artistic world through imagination and association in taste. Therefore, in the planning and layout of image combination, the author should concentrate sincere, strong and healthy thoughts and feelings in the limited picture of life, so as to make the work poetic and intriguing. Image combination is the first way to create artistic conception. In the final analysis, it is a blend of scenes. A good poet can achieve the artistic conception of "emotion in the scene, emotion contains the scene" For example, in Li Bai's Farewell to Meng Haoran on the way to Yangzhou, an old friend left the Yellow Crane Tower in the west and fireworks went down to Yangzhou in March. Sailing alone in the blue sky, I can see the Yangtze River flowing in the sky. This poem has a series of individual images, such as the Yellow Crane Tower, fireworks, solitary sails and the Yangtze River. These images are combined to form a realistic picture, which hides feelings in the landscape. Although feelings are not expressed, they are often more expressive in the landscape. The poem does not directly express the attachment to friends, but the image of a poet who disappeared through a lonely sail. The river grew, the river grew and lost, expressing deep feelings. On the surface, this poem is about scenery, but actually every sentence is lyrical. It is true that all landscape words are affectionate. Artistic conception originates from images, which can be reasonably fabricated. On this basis, the artistic conception naturally has both real and imaginary conditions. When images form a complete artistic structure in some way, images entering poetry often produce new whole and new content because of mutual restriction and function. The last words of He Zhu's Jade Case: "A stream of smoke, a city full of wind, plums and yellow rain." When these three images are combined into an image structure, the aesthetic effect of this image structure is not the sum of the three images, but a sublimation process from reality to emptiness. The poet thinks that the absence of a lover is like the lost spring, and he doesn't know where to go, which makes him more mixed feelings and full of worries. Here and now, I feel so sad and confused, like endless tobacco, like sheep flying all over the city. If it rains endlessly, it will be too sad and confused to gather in front of me and cannot be dispersed. The above analysis shows that it is important and necessary to analyze the meaning of a single image in poetry, but it is far from enough. It is very important to truly grasp the artistic conception of poetry and carefully analyze the image combination in poetry. This also reminds us that only if the structural combination of images is clever can we provide a dreamy artistic conception. This is because excellent poetry has its explicit or implicit structure to be found. For poets, it is this structure that combines unrelated and even contradictory images together, thus forming a vital organic whole to convey the poet's thoughts and feelings. As far as readers are concerned, we understand the poet's thoughts and feelings by analyzing the framework of image combination. Therefore, for beginners to write poetry, it has been repeatedly emphasized from the beginning that artistic conception creation is abstract, empty and even more difficult to achieve. Poetry writing should avoid both intentional images and unintentional images. With images, it is possible to write poetic works. Without imagery, there is no poetry. But with images, it is impossible to form a beautiful artistic conception without organic combination with deep emotions. Writing poetry is a creative process from image to artistic conception, and commenting poetry is also a process from evaluating surface images to exploring deep image combinations, so as to understand the poet's thoughts and feelings from the outside to the inside. The beauty of poetry is more reflected in the artistic conception formed by the combination of images, which is also the main reason why many poetry critics repeatedly strengthen the artistic conception.