Yang Xiaomin clearly summed up his relationship with poetry: "My working environment may be far away from poetry ... I am also far away from the poetry circle, and I don't have much contact with it. Poetry is a kind of personal labor. I think poetry is not only a form, but also a thoughtful and meaningful form. But poetry is by no means the expression of thoughts, and thoughts are poetic thoughts in poetry. Poetry is a linguistic adventure and a spiritual discovery for poets. " This sincere statement is not a new theory, but it reflects the poet's respect and tolerance for the secular destiny: the personal lifestyle cannot bear the emotional appeal of poetry, and poetry itself does not require writers to sacrifice secular life. Daily life, which is increasingly corroded by money, may not be poetic on the surface, but the refinement and discovery of poetry is related to a person's wisdom and purity of soul. This is the process of extracting gold from dust. In my opinion, Yang Xiaomin's poems have such qualities. He is unique. To say the least, we can see that he is also an independent thinker by examining his other sociological works. Therefore, for Yang Xiaomin, poetry was completely excavated in his personal spiritual realm and grew silently. No one knows how he quietly reached a dazzling height today. The greatest feature of his poetry is that he can make a timely poetic and linguistic conscious response with the changes of the times, just like a moss full of vitality, pinned on the illusory cornerstone created by the poet. It refuses to accept the dim brilliance of the current vulgar and stingy poetry world, and also refuses the harsh intimidation of daily life. It is a poetic record of a lonely personal spiritual history and a spiritual miracle.
Today, his attitude is a sincere, hardworking and introverted craftsman, constantly forging the metal of language, holding the golden branch of poetry to make it shine, according to all the villages and cities he walked along the way, dawn and night, the sky and the earth, all his gains, the words and expressions of those soft poems, all surpassed the material, but eventually they all gathered into a different kind of poem.
After reading Yang Xiaomin's poems carefully and interpreting them in a new critical way, I find that Yang Xiaomin, as a writer, can attract my attention more. I used to wear the title of poet silently on my head like a crown of thorns, and I always felt a deep anxiety, because today, the identity of a poet has gradually become a prop and costume of some people in the dark historical tunnel that has been squeezed by politics for a long time. Today, judging a person's "poet temperament" has become a kind of good-will irony to inappropriate people, and even the pursuit of brilliant poetry. Today, it has also become a conspiracy to exchange the principle of "Kung Fu is outside poetry". However, Yang Xiaomin's efforts in writing poetry and being a man, seriousness and simplicity have always given me some unspeakable hints and inspirations: poetry has always provided people with only inner enlightenment and intangible spiritual comfort, only a way to improve individual life and spiritual quality, and there are not many practical benefits to show off.
The reason why Yang Xiaomin stayed away from the non-budding poetry circle is based on the above considerations. In a poem of the same name he wrote for the poet, he revealed his spiritual source and role orientation as a poet in extremely simple language: "In the blue TV building/I opened the bright window/a train derailed/a sexy girl/posted on the red crossing/in this exciting city/my hair.
In the writing of these lines of self-portraits, what I see is a huge whirlpool-like contradiction, a contradiction between reason and emotion, and a contradiction between the daily experience world and the ideal situation. In this regard, Yang Xiaomin himself said: "My writing itself is very contradictory. As a poet, I really want to strive for more public space or more readers. As far as my writing is concerned, I focus on personal narrative, mood, life experience and spiritual growth. It can be said that it is personal and personalized writing, full of privacy and anxiety. This is also my confusion. Now the public space is too small, and poetry has always been in a dilemma. Poetry is suppressed in a small space, which is also its tragic side. Like my writing, I try my best to help the growth of China's new poetry in the possible private space while maintaining personal independence. This is also the direction of a China poetry writer. " This contradiction constitutes all the spiritual perplexities and difficult choices of the poet Yang Xiaomin. In the sky reflected by the city, in the jungle of reinforced concrete, poetry has been savagely pushed into the field of imagination and memory. For Yang Xiaomin, the poet's retreat to his personal corner and the primitive background of human beings is entirely a voluntary personal choice, which is also based on both rationality and emotion. In his early works, I can see that after living in the city for 15 years, looking back at the rural background is always accompanied by his writing process, and he is a homesick person with rural culture. Therefore, this does not mean that Yang Xiaomin is a backward rural bard, lacking the concept of modern poetry. He is not embracing the ancient closed place with wishful thinking, but deepening and sublimating this inner soul appeal, turning this homesickness into a very accurate and affectionate record and footnote that China will eventually transform from a big agricultural civilization country to a modern and even post-modern country.
In the past ten years, his writing has undergone several changes in different stages, and his thinking angle has been constantly broadened. Among them, poetry writing is a part, and theoretical achievements are also a part. Behind these different writing forms are the author's painstaking criticism of language, his dissatisfaction with simple rural lyricism and urban life, his extremely personal whispering and "intellectual" writing about academic background, and his persistent almost paranoid standard of good poetry.
Maybe it's too late to trace back and describe the mystery of Yang Xiaomin's writing after he became famous and honored in the poetry circle, and after Lu Xun's literary prize fell on his head. My speech may be suspected of following suit. However, after reading most of Yang Xiaomin's poems, I especially want to say that this lonely and persistent poet embodies a new poetic style and language reality compared with the ever-lively world of poetry. Moreover, even if he got some sincere praise and reward from the poem itself, I still firmly present my personal thoughts and, together with all readers who care about poetry, re-recognize and enjoy his exploration and contribution purely belonging to poetry.