Xu Zhimo's later poems are obviously different from his early poems in ideological tendency and emotional tendency. In Tiger and Wandering, sadness and despair pervade most poems. This may be related to the political situation in 1927, and it is also very likely to be related to some changes in his personal life. This kind of despair, as he repeatedly lamented in "I don't know the wind": "I don't know which direction the wind blows-/I am in a dream,/broken in the sadness of my dream!" You can temporarily forget some real pain in your dreams, but after all, you can't dream forever. When you wake up, you have to face the reality. There are too many terrible things in reality. Therefore, there are many sentences in Xu Zhimo's poems that try to avoid reality, such as "friend, what's the use of worrying?" Let's drink and play, it's cool under this locust tree. " In the later love poems, it is also obviously different from the previous ones, showing the indulgence, such as late at night, don't twist me, it hurts. In a sense, these poems can be understood as a manifestation of the spiritual crisis of the poet Xu Zhimo in this period. He struggled in the great contrast between reality and ideal, trying to find or wait for a "real resurrection opportunity." Judging from the poems published by 1930, such as Wild Goose and Orioles, Xu Zhimo has gradually freed himself from sadness and despair, and some new factors are sprouting in his thoughts. Unfortunately, the air crash at the end of 193 1 took this talented poet away forever.
Among the crescent poets, Xu Zhimo did not actively explore poetry theory and art like Wen Yiduo and Rao Mengkan, but established a unique artistic personality of poetry through creative practice and expanding the art of new poetry.
First of all, Xu Zhimo's poem is a poem expressing his soul alone. Xu Zhimo himself has an explanation: "What I want is pure thoughts that really come out of my bones, my blood, my soul and my life." When discussing the poetic art of Crescent School and Xu Zhimo, Zhu Ziqing also made a very accurate grasp: "As a poet, Xu is more known to the world. He is not as precise as Wen, but he is equally calm. He is jumping and splashing a kind of water of life that stays up all night. " The "spirit of nature" emphasized by Xu Zhimo is actually a true feeling from the heart, a kind of inner affection. Driven by this emotion, he expressed his pursuit of ideals and beautiful things and his love for nature and love in his poems. It is this sincere emotion that makes Xu Zhimo's poems always look so natural, lacking traces of man-made, emitting a kind of natural vitality like "water of life" and having unique artistic charm. For example, those nostalgic poems "Farewell to Cambridge" and "Aiman Shufei" are masterpieces from the depths of the soul. Because of the beauty in memory and the touch in heart, those scenery are no longer purely objective natural objects. Clouds, golden willows, green grass, waves and Shui Ying are all colored and beautiful because of affection. Cambridge has witnessed the good times of the past, but now things have changed, and there are many unforgettable life regrets hidden here! Every landscape here is full of emotion, and the combination of emotion and scenery is seamless, so it is possible to show the "Chi Mo style" free and easy and helpless.
Secondly, the seemingly handy image is actually a painstakingly constructed image. The beauty of Xu Zhimo's poems lies in images. The composition of poetic images has some very personalized methods and effects. These images are familiar to people in nature, in life and in the poems of English romantic poets, but they have unique and novel characteristics after being influenced by the feelings of poet Xu Zhimo. There are usually three ways to construct images in Xu Zhimo's poems: one is to give emotional color to objective images through emotionalization, making them from plain to strange. It not only makes readers feel the things and scenes that belong to their own experience, but also makes readers feel that they contain brand-new interests. For example, in Huang Peng, the descriptions of oriole "breaking through the dense and turning into colorful clouds" and "like spring, like flame, like enthusiasm" are novel here, because there is a feeling of a poet. Another example is Farewell to Cambridge: "The golden willow by the river is the bride in the sunset." The transition from Golden Willow to Bride is the result of the poet's emotional displacement. Secondly, metaphor plays an important role in the formation of novel images. For example, in Nora, Shi An "is the gentleness of bowing his head,/like the shyness of an invincible water lotus in the cool breeze". A wonderful metaphor describes the charming expression of Miss Japan when she bid farewell to her friends, and the tenderness of oriental style remains in the reader's memory. Another example is She is Sleeping, in which J's poetic metaphor is used to describe her sleeping state-"a white lotus under the starlight", "a wisp of smoke curling in the incense burner" and "noisy strings are suppressed by spring". Metaphor is used to construct images, which helps to highlight some characteristics of images. It can not only expand the meaning through analogy, but also enhance the image of poetry. Second, grasp the feelings and impressions instantly and freeze them as images. For example, in "Gray Life": "I grabbed the northwest wind and asked him for the color of the fallen leaves." Capturing that unique moment, we can, as the English poet Blake said, "a world in a grain of sand, a paradise in a flower." . /infinity is in the palm of your hand,/and an instant becomes eternity. "Xu Zhimo captured these moments with a poetic pen, which produced a unique taste and a novel taste for readers.
Thirdly, the beauty of Xu Zhimo's poetry lies in self-discipline. Xu Zhimo is a representative poet of Crescent Society, and Xu Zhimo agrees with the opinions of Crescent Society poets on the metrical aspects of new poetry. In Xu Zhimo's poems, the form, artistic conception and rhetoric are all beautiful. It is particularly noteworthy that Xu Zhimo's pursuit of musical beauty is almost obsessive. From the perspective of syllables, the syllables and melodies of Xu Zhimo's poems are very natural and harmonious. He once said: "The beauty of poetry lies not in its meaning, but in its elusive syllables." His syllables seem to be assisted by the gods, but in fact, this natural and harmonious effect is also a deliberate effect. One is that syllables are consistent with the changes of thoughts and feelings expressed in poems, and the other is that they are supported by effective techniques. In his poems, a lot of overlapping words and sentences are used to create a desired effect. For example, the "gentleness" and "quietness" in the first and last paragraphs of A Farewell to Cambridge create a special sense of rhythm. For another example, the rhythm and melody of Nora in Shi 'an are very gentle and soothing, and the last sentence ends with "Nora in Shi 'an" in Japanese instead of the crisp and decisive "goodbye" in Chinese. Gentle and lingering, full of oriental female charm. From these meticulous treatments, it is not difficult for readers to appreciate the painstaking tone of the poet Xu Zhimo. Xu Zhimo is also very particular about rhyming. Because the new verse should be close to spoken language, syllables can easily become rambling, and the cohesion and penetration of rhyme feet become particularly important. Xu Zhimo's poems sometimes have one rhyme, and sometimes a poem has several rhymes at the same time, which does not form a preference for one rhyme. This shows that Xu Zhimo's poems are not exactly like Hu Shi's initiative in the rhyme of free verse-new poems "compete in nature and distinguish naturally in tone"-so the rhyme of Xu Zhimo's poems is not only the pursuit of a "language rhythm", but also a "language rhythm". The rhythm of pronunciation can be said to be the rhythm of prose, but the rhythm of form belongs to the strict rhythm of poetry.
Xu Zhimo's poems not only respect the expression habits of modern Chinese, but also make a breakthrough in the language habits of modern Chinese. In terms of grammatical norms, there are both the infiltration of China's classical poems and the influence of English poems; In the process of metrical new poetry, there is both an effective integration of Wen Yiduo's "two beauties" and his own unique understanding. He is creating and discovering according to his "true poetry". Therefore, his exploration in the art of poetry has made an irreplaceable contribution to the artistic development of China's modern poetry.