Since the beginning of the new century, China's poetry seems to have entered a state of poverty without passion for innovation, and it is impossible to get rid of the entanglement of mediocrity. Those original works of art that once excited readers to pursue their own unique experience and express the universal feelings of mankind seem to be drifting away from people's daily life, and China's poems inevitably enter the predicament of lack of fine works of art.. There are many reasons why China's current poetry creation is unsatisfactory. The most critical factor is that the literary aesthetic consciousness of the whole society is generally weakened under the promotion of globalization and marketization, which leads to the lack of poetry evaluation standards. Therefore, one of the ways to break the difficult predicament faced by China's poetry creation and enhance the spiritual cohesion of China's poetry is to re-understand the evaluation criteria of China's poetry.
No matter whether it is a poet who works hard in the field of poetry, a critic who studies poetry, or an ordinary reader who is interested in poetry, I am afraid no one is satisfied with the current poetry creation. Even if you read hundreds of works now, you can rarely find good works that can touch people's hearts. So, what kind of poems are good?
Good poetry is a profound grasp of the real life of an era and an aesthetic insight into the pursuit of a nation's inner spirit. It is a sincere concern that naturally flows from the poet's heart. Poets live in reality, so poetry naturally takes real life as the object of expression. However, the poet's grasp of real life is neither a fleeting glimpse of the current life fashion nor a whispering aftertaste of his own life interest, but a profound understanding of the concrete life of ordinary people and the spiritual undercurrent hidden under the appearance of daily life. Real life is the origin of literary creation. Poets never walk into ordinary people's lives for the purpose of creation, but take ordinary people's lives as a starting point and go deep into the bottom of ordinary people's lives. As the Peruvian writer mario llosa said, the writer's responsibility is to "penetrate life with imagination" and "construct the reality of life" with his own artistic creation. The realistic life forms of an era are complex and diverse. The poet's grasp of the real life situation is by no means to express trivial details of life in his poems, but to pursue the inner spiritual trend of a nation in the surging tide of life and explore the inner feelings of an ordinary person in daily life. Therefore, when we read Zheng Min's "Golden Rice Bundle", "Golden Rice Bundle is standing/cut in the autumn field/I think of countless tired mothers/I see/that beautiful face wrinkled on the evening road; /When the full moon on the harvest day is at the top of the towering trees,/In the twilight, distant mountains surround our hearts,/No statue can be more silent than this. We can't help but say that this poem is a good one, because the poet has grasped the spiritual connotation of "tenacity" and "silence" shown by a nation during the war years.
Good poetry is a reasonable publicity of human spirit transcending national boundaries, a poetic inquiry into the eternal value of human beings across time and space, and a human thinking that gradually sublimates from the spiritual bottom of the poet. Literature is the spiritual product of a nation in a specific era, which naturally has distinct characteristics of the times and sociality, and bears an irreplaceable brand of a specific nation. However, the fundamental reason why all great literary works can transcend national boundaries and time and space is that they express the universal spirit pursued by human beings. Therefore, good poetry should not only focus on the presentation of the national real life of an era, but should take this as a starting point and be good at discovering the universal values of human beings hidden at the bottom of their national spirit, such as affirming truth, promoting goodness, yearning for beauty, pursuing ideals, surpassing themselves, affirming individual freedom, respecting personal dignity and so on. However, good poetry is definitely not an abstract summary of the universal values of human beings, which is divorced from the actual living conditions of a nation. On the contrary, all transcendental human values are often integrated into the concrete real life of each nation. The poet's responsibility is to integrate into the real life of ordinary people and pursue the ultimate value of mankind in the daily life of accumulating a national historical memory. So, when we read Chen Ziang's poems on the Youzhou rostrum, "Before me, where was the past era?"? Behind me, where are the future generations? . /I miss heaven and earth, and there is no limit,/and I am alone in tears. "We feel the poet's universal human sorrow that it is difficult to balance the infinity of the universe with the finiteness of life. When we read Shelley's ode to the west wind, "Pass on my words to all the people in the world,/It's like lighting a spark in an eternal stove! Let the horn of prophecy blow over my lips/to the sleeping earth! Oh, the wind,/If winter comes, can spring be far behind? " We also feel the universal ideal pursuit of human beings contained in the poem. It is precisely because these poems feel the value inquiry that human beings have been exploring from the specific life of their respective nationalities that they have lasting significance beyond national boundaries and time and space.
Good poetry is not only the aesthetic sublimation of daily life language, but also the perfect transcendence of existing poetic art forms. Creating unparalleled stylistic forms should be the highest pursuit. The ancients said: "The heart is ambition, the mouth is speech, the beauty of speech is literature, and the beauty of literature is poetry." I'm talking about the importance of language use in poetry creation. After the May 4th New Culture Movement, vernacular Chinese became the main tool of literary creation, and colloquialism became an important trend of poetry development. However, the colloquialism of poetry creation does not mean the mediocrity of language. Spoken language in daily life can become the language of poetry creation, but it must be aesthetically processed by the poet. The colloquialism of poetic language is not only the artistry of poetic language, but also the aesthetics of poets expressing their life feelings in poetic language. So, when we read Bian's Broken Chapters, "You are standing on the bridge watching the scenery,/and the people watching the scenery are watching you upstairs. /The bright moon decorated your window,/You decorated other people's dreams. "What we feel is the arrangement and combination of the poet's daily life language and images, expressing the common but unspeakable life experiences and emotions of ordinary people. On the basis of pursuing the aestheticization of daily life language, good poetry is a unique creation of unrepeatable style, which is also the inevitable result of poetry as the product of human spiritual activities. From Han Fu to Tang Law, from Song Ci to Yuan Qu, from novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties to modern free verse, literati in different times are making stylistic innovations. As an inevitable trend of China's literary modernization, the appearance of modern free verse provides unlimited possibilities for the poet's literary creation, but it also increases unprecedented difficulties. Only by not repeating others as much as possible in the creation of stylistic forms can we say that the poet has truly achieved artistic innovation, and such poems are really good.