What influence did the ultra-left ideological trend have on the development of China's poetry?

For a period of time after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the anti-rightist struggle and the Great Leap Forward in the second half of 1958 seriously affected the development of poetry. Due to the expansion of the anti-rightist struggle, a group of talented, accomplished or budding poets, old and new, were wrongly classified as "Rightists" and forced to stop writing, such as Ai Qing, Bai Hua, Gong Liu, Gong Mu and Shao Yanxiang.

During this period, there appeared a very strange and contradictory phenomenon in poetry creation: on the one hand, there appeared some excellent works of working people who urgently demanded to change their poverty and poor feelings, as well as the spirit of hard struggle, and there appeared some poets from workers and peasants (such as porter Huang, whose poems were full of lofty sentiments). On the other hand, the whole road of poetry creation (from theme to form, from thought to style) is getting narrower and narrower. As an excellent poet like Guo Xiaochuan, his poems are not allowed to have the slightest exploration and breakthrough in theme and artistic form. His Ode to Snow and Starry Sky have all been rudely criticized, and Cai Qijiao, whose poetic style is mild, has also been repeatedly criticized.

As a result, poetry was forced to bid farewell to the newly emerging diversified style, and the poet's creation began to avoid people's true feelings and carefully keep a distance from the grim reality.