In the development of China literature, poetry (including poetry, fu, ci, qu, etc. ) has made great achievements. However, in modern times, the creation of classical poetry has gradually become rigid, "platitudes" are full, and the tendency of "moaning without illness" is quite common. The vocabulary used in classical poetry is seriously out of touch with modern spoken language, and its forms (including sentence patterns, antitheses and even rhymes). Therefore, the new poetry revolution has become the first and most important part of the May 4th New Literature Movement.
In the early days of new poetry, he tried to abolish the formal constraints of old-style poetry, and advocated integrating vernacular Chinese into poetry, with the main content of expressing the poet's true feelings. Therefore, new poetry was also called "vernacular poetry", "vernacular poetry" and "mandarin poetry" at that time (Qian's preface to the collection, Hu Shi's talk about new poetry and Kang's my opinion on the bottom of new poetry).
19 17 In February, New Youth published eight vernacular poems by Hu Shi, which were the first batch of vernacular new poems in the China New Poetry Movement. The first collection of poems in vernacular Chinese was Hu Shi's Trial Collection (1920), which took on a brand-new look in thought and art at the earliest, and made great contributions to the establishment of new poetry.
In the process of its establishment and development, new poetry has been greatly influenced by foreign poetry, which has played a positive role in the formation of artistic methods of new poetry. On the basis of absorbing the beneficial nutrition of China's classical poems, folk songs and foreign poems, many poets have explored the expression methods and artistic forms of new poetry in many aspects, and produced various artistic trends of thought such as realism, romanticism and symbolism. There are many forms, such as free verse, new metrical poem, sonnet, pedal poem, prose poem and so on. The exploration of many poets and the creation of some excellent poets have gradually made new poetry mature and diversified. Since the May 4th Movement, new poetry has been the main body of China's modern poetry.