Part I: Theoretical Principles of New Poetry Creation and Criticism
Chapter 1: The Formal Evolution of Chinese-language New Poetry

New poetry originated from the inspiration of Western culture. In the Chinese region, it arose after the 1919 May Fourth Movement, based on the Western cultural trends of Democracy (“Mr. De”) and Science (“Mr. Sai”), giving rise to the “New Culture Movement.” In Taiwan, it originated during the Japanese colonial period with the “Taiwan New Literature Movement.” The Li (Hat) poet Chen Qianwu was the first to propose that Taiwanese new poetry derives from the “theory of two root spheres”: “Another source is Taiwan’s past during the Japanese colonial era, through the influence of the Japanese literary world, as practiced by Yano Hōjin, Nishikawa Mitsuru, and others, embodying the spirit of modern poetry.” This refers to the “Windmill Poetry Society” established in 1933 by poets such as Yang Chichang from Japan and Taiwan. This differs from the “Modernist Movement” of 1956; the Taiwanese new poetry advocated by Ji Xian is “the ‘Modernist school’ promoted by Dai Wangshu, Li Jinfa, and others, brought from mainland China by Ji Xian and Qin Zihao.” From the modern period to the contemporary era, new poetry has undergone continuous changes in its outward form, roughly passing through several stages: “vernacular poetry,” “free verse,” “new regulated verse” (Crescent School), “symbolism,” “imagism,” and finally the “modernist school.”

(1) Vernacular Poetry

This refers to poetry written in the vernacular after the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Movement, breaking the metrical constraints of classical poetry, not restricted by line length, and composed in the spoken language; it is also called “colloquial poetry.” Hu Shi proposed “I write with my hand what I speak with my mouth,” breaking the dogma that “without rhyme, it is not poetry.” In addition to being written in vernacular language, its characteristics include formal freedom and the absence of restrictions from traditional metrical requirements. It represents a liberation of poetic form and is deeply influenced by Western poetry (free verse). The rhythm, form, and variety of subject matter in new poetry have undergone many changes.

“Hope” / Hu Shi
I come from the mountains,
bringing orchid grass.
Planted in a small garden,
hoping it will bloom well.
Three times a day I look,
until the flowering time has passed;
the flower-watcher grows anxious,
not a single bud appears.
Seeing autumn arrive,
I move the plant indoors,
next year when spring wind returns,
I wish you a pot full of blossoms.

(2) Free Verse

The term “free verse” originates from the French “vers libre.” Its characteristics are the absence of fixed structure and fixed rhythm; rhyme can be used flexibly and is not required, yet it still emphasizes a sense of rhythm and musicality when read. The highest principle of free verse is “form determined by content.” Elements such as rhythm and rhyme, punctuation, number of words, line breaks, and stanza divisions are all determined by the theme and content of the poem. Form must sacrifice and conform to content; the poet need not strictly follow any writing conventions or norms that pursue surface formal beauty—everything is governed by the needs of the theme being expressed. That is to say, if the content of creation requires it, free verse may also arbitrarily employ metrical syntax.

Although free verse writing has almost no rigid rules, there are still some general basic principles. Usually, like prose, free verse uses punctuation marks to divide and combine segments of surface meaning; however, free verse also treats “a line” as a basic unit of internal abstract poetic meaning. If the internal abstract poetic meaning requires emphasizing a certain word or phrase, free verse may place that word or phrase on a line by itself; conversely, two or three complete sentences may also be combined into one line. In other words, the internal poetic meaning and the external sentence meaning of free verse—the adjustment of its thought rhythm and tonal cadence—depend entirely on line breaks and punctuation. The overall result of the poem follows the principle of natural spoken language; the choice of line breaks and punctuation determines the weight, urgency, and pacing of rhythmic pauses.

The basic proposition of free verse is to break all formal restrictions such as meter, in order to avoid limiting the thematic content of the poem into a forced fit (“cutting the feet to fit the shoes”). A common defect of free verse is looseness and diffuseness, lacking concision, thus becoming “prose broken into lines.” In the early 1920s, Chinese poets introduced and promoted the long-lined, colloquial free verse of the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman; since then, free verse has become the most popular poetic form in China. There are many examples of free verse, such as Guo Moruo’s The Goddess, an early famous free verse work. Most of Ai Qing’s works are free verse, including representative works such as Snow Falls on China’s Land and Dayan River—My Nanny.

“Snow Falls on China’s Land” / Ai Qing
Snow falls on China’s land.
Coldness is sealing off China…
The wind, like an overly sorrowful old woman,
closely follows,
stretching out its cold claws,
tugging at the clothes of passersby.
With something as ancient as the land,
it chatters incessantly…
From the forest appears
you, a Chinese peasant,
driving a horse-drawn cart,
wearing a fur hat,
braving the heavy snow—
where are you going?
Let me tell you,
I too am a descendant of peasants—
because of your faces,
engraved with wrinkles of suffering,
I have come to deeply understand
the hardship of years
for those living on the grasslands.
And I am no happier than you—
lying upon the river of time,
the waves of suffering
have swallowed and lifted me many times—
wandering and imprisonment
have taken away the most precious days of my youth,
my life,
like yours,
is equally worn and haggard.

Snow falls on China’s land,
coldness is sealing off China…
Along the river of a snowy night,
a small oil lamp moves slowly,
inside that tattered canopy boat,
lit by the lamp, head lowered—
who sits there?
Ah, you,
the disheveled young woman,
is it that
your home—
that nest of happiness and warmth—
has been burned down
by brutal enemies?
Is it that
on such a night as this,
having lost the protection of a man,
in the terror of death,
you have already suffered the mockery of enemy bayonets?
Alas, on such a cold night,
countless of our aged mothers
curl up in homes not their own,
like strangers in a foreign land,
not knowing what road
the wheels of tomorrow will roll upon—
and moreover,
China’s roads
are so rugged,
so muddy.

Snow falls on China’s land.
Coldness is sealing off China…
Across the grasslands of the snowy night,
those regions gnawed by the flames of war,
countless cultivators of the land
have lost their livestock,
have lost their fertile fields,
crowded into
the filthy alleys of despair;
the land of opportunity
stretches trembling arms
toward the darkened sky,
begging for aid.
China’s suffering and disaster
are as vast and long as this snowy night!

Snow falls on China’s land,
coldness is sealing off China…
China, on this night without light,
can these powerless lines I write
offer you even a little warmth?

(3) New Regulated Verse

In 1926, Wen Yiduo systematically put forward specific proposals for establishing new regulated verse in his essay The Meter of Poetry. He required “symmetry of stanzas and uniformity of lines, end rhyme, and that the number of ‘metrical feet’ (also called ‘metrical units,’ a translation of the English term ‘feet’) in each line be equal, producing orderly poetic lines through harmonious syllables.” He also pointed out that such meter should be “tailored according to the content.” With such advocacy, more people began writing regulated verse, and it became one of the forms within new poetry.

In the 1950s, He Qifang, in essays such as On Writing and Reading Poetry and On Modern Regulated Verse, proposed the concept and specific requirements for establishing “modern regulated verse”: each line should have the same number of pauses (tones), with several basic forms such as three pauses, four pauses, or five pauses per line; the final pause of each line is generally a disyllabic word; rhymes should be approximately similar; and because rhyme follows a pattern, the number of lines in each stanza is also regular. In the early 1960s, Zang Kejia proposed conciseness, general neatness, and rhyme as the basic conditions of new regulated verse: “when lines correspond to each other, the sound groups should be roughly equal, though some variation is permissible.” Their views were not entirely identical, but all tended toward the idea that new regulated verse should rhyme, that lines should be relatively neat, and that there should be a certain metrical form, though this form can be varied.

New regulated verse has its own set of self-repetitive rules to determine principles such as number of lines, number of stanzas, metrical feet, and rhyme scheme. The number of characters in each line, the number of lines in each stanza, and syllables all emphasize regularity, and rhyme is also emphasized. Poets sometimes establish their own metrical rules for a poem to create musical beauty, visual beauty, and formal beauty.

The two major characteristics of regulated verse are visual beauty and auditory beauty. Poets of the metrical school emphasize “symmetry within lines” and “uniformity within stanzas,” requiring harmonious and symmetrical relationships between lines. Within each stanza, at least two lines have symmetrical metrical length, producing a strong sense of rhythm when read aloud. The metrical school believes that the ability of poetry to evoke emotion lies entirely in its rhythm; thus, meter is rhythm. Many regulated poems consist of four lines per stanza, with the same number of characters in each line, appearing square and neat, humorously nicknamed “tofu-block poems.”

“Dead Water” / Wen Yiduo
This is a ditch of hopeless dead water,
a clear breeze cannot stir even the slightest ripple.
Better to throw in more scraps of copper and rotten iron,
or simply dump your leftover dishes and scraps.

Perhaps the copper will turn green into jade,
and a few peach blossoms will be embroidered on the iron cans;
let the grease weave a layer of gauze,
and mold steam out some rosy clouds for it.

Let the dead water ferment into a ditch of green wine,
floating full of pearl-like white foam;
small beads laugh once and turn into big beads,
then are bitten and burst by wine-stealing flower mosquitoes.

Then that ditch of hopeless dead water
may also boast a bit of vividness.
If frogs cannot bear the loneliness,
then even dead water can be said to have sung out a song.

This is a ditch of hopeless dead water,
this is by no means a place of beauty,
better to yield it to ugliness to cultivate,
and see what kind of world it will create.

New regulated verse was a commonly used form of the Crescent School after 1928. Famous poets include Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimo, Bian Zhilin, Liang Zongdai, Wu Xinghua, and others, but unfortunately it did not become mainstream. The new regulated verse of Xu Zhimo and others no longer strictly adhered to the “symmetry of stanzas” and “uniformity of lines,” moderately relaxing the formal restrictions of new regulated verse, retaining only stanza symmetry and rhyme:

“By Chance” / Xu Zhimo
I am a cloud in the sky,
occasionally casting a shadow in your wave-heart—
you need not be surprised,
nor need you be delighted—
in an instant, my trace vanishes.

You and I meet upon the sea at night,
you have yours, I have mine, directions;
you may remember,
or better you forget,
the light we release upon this meeting!

After the 1940s, such works gradually decreased. Many themes of modern society mostly belong to the tone of free verse, while subjects suitable for regulated verse became relatively rare. In the 1950s, it was heavily criticized by Taiwan’s modernist movement and declined thereafter. However, new regulated verse “returned in another form” within songs that emphasize “repetition and cyclical resonance,” giving rise to the “ballad style.” Xu Zhimo’s Farewell to Cambridge Again and Yu Guangzhong’s Nostalgia series are both in ballad style.

(4) Symbolist Poetry

Symbolism began as a poetic movement in France in the latter half of the 19th century. The earliest work of symbolism is Charles Pierre Baudelaire’s (1821–1867) poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). Subsequently, poets such as Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) published more symbolist poetry, such as Mallarmé’s Afternoon of a Faun and Rimbaud’s Vowels. In 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto was published in Le Figaro, marking the maturation of symbolism as a literary school.

Early Chinese symbolist poetry appeared in the 1920s. The main representative poets were Li Jinfa and Dai Wangshu; other symbolist poets or those who produced symbolist works include Wang Duqing, Mu Mutian, Feng Naichao, and others. The theory and practice of symbolism began influencing the Chinese modern poetry movement—which had already entered vernacular poetry—in the 1920s. In 1925, Li Jinfa published Drizzle, the earliest symbolist work in China, and in the following four years, he published more symbolist poetry.

In 1926, Mu Mutian, in On Poetry—A Letter to Guo Moruo, pointed out that poetry should have modes of thinking and expression different from prose, emphasizing suggestion and ambiguity, and proposed the concept of “pure poetry.” So-called “pure poetry” includes two aspects. First, poetry and prose belong to entirely different domains, advocating that “the purely expressive world should be given to poetry, while human life should be left to prose,” “the world of poetry is the world of the subconscious,” poetry is “the reflection of inner life,” and “the true symbol of inner life.” Second, poetry should have modes of thinking and expression different from prose: “Poetry must suggest; what poetry most avoids is explanation. Explanation belongs to the world of prose. Behind poetry there must be great philosophy, but poetry cannot explain philosophy.” “Poetry is not as clear as chemical formulas like H₂ + O = H₂O; the less clear, the better. Clarity belongs to the world of concepts, and poetry most avoids concepts.”

As Li Jinfa’s representative work, the poem The Abandoned Woman embodies several characteristics of his poetry (and indeed of the entire symbolist school). First, it breaks conventional logic, omits ordinary associative processes, and uses leaping thoughts to prompt readers to expand their imagination. Second, it employs novel metaphors and suggestive imagery. The poet not only uses unique metaphors for the sorrow and despair of the abandoned woman, but also uses the figure of the abandoned woman to symbolize the poet’s own fate in an innovative and striking way. The poem does not explicitly reveal social cruelty, the coldness of the human world, or the perversity of fate; instead, these are suggested through drifting, hazy imagery. Third, it uses synesthetic techniques. Phrases such as “melancholy turns into ashes,” “the aging skirt emits a lament,” “countless nomads tremble,” and “night and mosquitoes walk together” combine incongruous elements to create a crossing and intercommunication of senses, producing a multidimensional experience. Fourth, it uses symbolic imagery to highlight the poet’s latent subjective consciousness. The entire poem The Abandoned Woman not only uses the image of the abandoned woman to symbolize human destiny, but at a deeper level symbolizes the poet’s complex understanding of the human world, suffering, and despair. The distance between surface image and underlying imagery creates depth of poetic mood, but also brings obscurity and difficulty of interpretation.

In summary, although poems rich in imagery like The Abandoned Woman are not common in Li Jinfa’s overall work, his poetry clearly shows decadent and escapist tendencies that pursue dreamlike states, overly Europeanized syntax, a mixture of classical and vernacular language, and at times obscure imagery. Nevertheless, Li Jinfa and the early symbolist school he represents did carry out meaningful exploration and experimentation for the development of Chinese new poetry.

“The Abandoned Woman” / Li Jinfa
Long hair spreads before my eyes,
thus cutting off all shameful gazes,
the rushing of fresh blood, the sleep of dry bones.
Night and mosquitoes walk slowly together,
crossing the corner of this short wall,
shouting wildly behind my pure ears,
like the raging wind of the wilderness:
countless nomads tremble.
Leaning on a blade of grass, I wander with God’s spirit in the empty valley.
My sorrow is deeply imprinted only in the minds of wandering bees;
or it flows long with the mountain spring over the cliff,
then goes away together with red leaves.
The hidden worries of the abandoned woman accumulate in her movements,
the fire of the sunset cannot turn the melancholy of time
into ashes to fly out of the chimney,
but stains long upon the feathers of wandering crows,
and will perch together upon the rocks of roaring seas,
quietly listening to the boatman’s song.
The aging skirt emits a lament,
wandering beside graves,
never with warm tears,
dropping upon the grass
as decoration for the world.

An “abandoned woman” in the past referred to a woman cast off by her husband. At that time, there was no concept of divorce; separation could only occur if the husband repudiated the wife, also called “casting out.” Generally, it was assumed the wife had committed a grave fault to be expelled. Typically, she could only return to her natal family, but as her presence brought shame, she would not be treated well. In reality, an abandoned woman was a person cast out by society.

After the New Culture Movement, at least under new ideas of universal love and equality, marginalized groups such as abandoned women, prostitutes, and beggars began to enter literary works. The abandoned woman, as a figure rejected by society or standing in opposition to it—essentially a psychological self-image—was written about by many authors.

In this poem, the image of the abandoned woman is: “long hair spreads before my eyes.” The hair covering her face signifies destitution; at the same time, it is her only protection, shielding her from the world’s contempt and suffering—the rushing blood and the sleeping bones. Through this action, she expresses that the world holds no value for her. Of course, such protection is extremely weak; the world continues to disturb her, as seen in the “shouting of mosquitoes.”

“Night and mosquitoes walk slowly together / crossing the corner of this short wall / shouting wildly behind my pure ears / like the raging wind of the wilderness / countless nomads tremble.” Though the buzzing of mosquitoes is faint, it causes intense psychological stimulation, especially as it occurs behind the ear, intensifying the shock.

The abandoned woman lives in an uninhabited valley: “leaning on a blade of grass, wandering with God’s spirit in the empty valley / my sorrow is deeply imprinted only in the minds of wandering bees / or flows long with the mountain spring over the cliff / then goes away with red leaves.” “Mountain spring, cliff, red leaves” all describe aspects of the “empty valley.” The so-called “wandering with God’s spirit” is merely self-mockery, indicating that her sorrow has no one to confide in.

Having no one to confide in is the most painful thing. All her troubles come from human beings, and only humans can resolve them. Can burning them with fire solve them? No. “The hidden worries of the abandoned woman accumulate in her movements / the fire of the sunset cannot turn the melancholy of time into ashes to fly out of the chimney / but stains long upon the feathers of wandering crows.” This is a remarkably subtle line: melancholy cannot be burned away, nor can it stain a crow’s feathers—since the crow is already black. This shows her troubles cannot be resolved. Notably, the crow is also an ominous symbol.

Yet this crow shows some companionship; it stays with the abandoned woman: “will perch together upon the rocks of roaring seas / quietly listening to the boatman’s song.” This crow resembles the poet himself—unable to release her from suffering, only able to accompany her in silent listening. Their inner worlds are connected. The final stanza expresses a complete severance from the human world: “never with warm tears / dropping upon the grass / as decoration for the world.” This abandoned woman remains hardened from beginning to end.

(5) Imagist Poetry

Imagism is a school in modern Anglo-American poetry, and it is the earliest, most important, and most influential school in the American new poetry movement. It emerged on the eve of World War I. Imagism arose from a critique of Romanticism, reacting against the late Romanticism that dominated English and American poetry at the time, namely the Victorian poetic style.

In late spring or early summer of 1912, Ezra Pound (1885–1972), together with H.D. and Richard Aldington, agreed upon three principles of poetic composition:
(1) Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
(2) Use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
(3) As for rhythm: compose according to the sequence of the musical phrase, not according to the mechanical repetition of the metronome.

Pound referred to the “image” as “an instantaneous complex (a composite) of thought and emotion (a complex)”. This definition contains the inner and outer two layers of the structure of the image. The inner layer is the “meaning (yi)”, which is the composite or “complex” of the poet’s subjective rationality and emotion. The outer layer is the “image (xiang)”, which is a kind of visual “presentation”. Both layers are indispensable.

Regarding the internal aspect of poetry, what is emphasized is the fusion and combination of the subject’s thought or rationality with emotion, namely the “complex” or “composite”, which can also be called the “meaning” of the image. In the external aspect, Pound believed that the “complex” of thought and emotion must be presented in an instant as an “image (xiang)” in order to constitute a complete image. “Image” refers to the projection of form in visual imagination. This view derives from the French philosopher Henri Bergson (Henri Bergson, 1859–1941) and his advocacy of “intuitionism”.

Regarding the requirement for “image”, Pound tended to advocate a kind of precise description of objects, so that the internal and external images expressing thought and emotion would precisely correspond to real life. It can be seen that Pound’s requirement for poetic imagery is that both in describing external things and in expressing the inner self, a high degree of precision and authenticity must be achieved.

Pound’s poem “in a station of the metro” is said to have originally been 31 lines; he revised it until in the end it was reduced to only 2 lines.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

這幾張臉在人群中幻景般閃現；
濕漉漉的黑樹枝上花瓣數點。

This poem is indeed densely poetic in quality, but what exactly does it want to express? Is it the fleeting forms in a vast sea of people?

Now look at another poem by Pound, “少女”:

〈少女〉
Trees grow into my palms,
Leaves rise up my arms,
Trees in my chest
grow downward,
Branches grow out of me like arms.

You are a tree,
You are moss,
You are a violet blown by a gentle wind,
You are a child—this tall,
All of this, the world regards as foolishness.

This poem left a deep impression on the author, especially the final concluding line, which unexpectedly delivers a total negation (as if “reset and redo”), producing a quite shocking effect.

The poem is divided into two sections, adopting a form similar to a letter style. The first section is narrated in the voice of the mother (“I”), describing how her body is occupied by a tree (the daughter), expressing a mother’s selfless maternal love. The second section speaks to the daughter, describing her growth process: from tree (childhood) to moss (rebellious adolescence), from moss to the upright and graceful violet (mature, sensible, considerate adulthood). The mother gives everything for the daughter’s growth, yet the world regards this as merely “a mother’s duty”, not worthy of attention and not necessary to be discussed. The poem reveals a very ordinary yet real maternal love. This love may seem insignificant in the eyes of the world, but it is, after exhausting all effort, a precious and invaluable return for the mother.

The Imagist trend influenced Chinese New Poetry poets. During the May Fourth period, its representatives included Liu Bannong, Shen Yimo, Liu Dabai, Kang Baiqing, and Wang Tongzhao. Imagism was introduced into Taiwan through the translation of Qin Zihhao, and its main influenced poets included Yu Guangzhong, Xiang Ming, Rongzi, and some poets of the Blue Star Poetry Society.

(6) Modernist Poetry

In January 1956, initiated by Ji Xian, and with Fang Si, Zheng Chouyu, Shang Qin, Lin Hengtai and others participating in the preparation, the first Modern Poetry Poets Congress was held in Taipei, formally declaring the establishment of the “Modernist School”. Besides the above poets, its core members also included Luo Men, Yang Lingye, Xin Yu, Li Sha, Ji Jiang, Ye Ni, Lin Leng, Rongzi, and Cao Yang.

Ji Xian’s “Modernist School” inherited the basic spirit of Dai Wangshu’s “modernist” poetic view, while its formal expression was even more avant-garde. In February 1956, Ji Xian, in issue 13 of Modern Poetry, raised the banner of modernism, using the journal as the “common magazine of the Modernist poets group”, and with the literary program of “leading a new poetry revolution, promoting modernization of new poetry”, he proposed the “Six Great Tenets of Modernism”, clearly stating the view that “new poetry is a horizontal transplantation, not a vertical inheritance”.

From Ji Xian’s Modern Poetry onward, the formal transplantation of Western modernist poetry had a clear historical lineage. The “Six Great Tenets” proposed by Ji Xian’s “Modernist School” laid the theoretical foundation for the surge of Taiwan’s modern poetry movement. However, although the Modernist School had its program and leadership, it was only a loose literary association; its tenets were not strictly practiced by all members. Ji Xian’s own later poems often contradicted his own theories.

The theory of the “Modernist School” mainly came through Lin Hengtai’s translation of French “modernism”, especially its excessive emphasis on “horizontal transplantation” and “intellect”. This anti-traditional and wholesale Westernization stance once aroused criticism and protest from various sides. Later Ji Xian reflected and revised his position, confessing that he had led new poetry into a wrong path, and in 1959 he announced his withdrawal from the “Modernist School”. Modern Poetry also ceased publication on February 1, 1964.

Nevertheless, Ji Xian’s role as a banner figure of modernist poetry was still recognized in Taiwanese literary circles. The journal published for more than ten years, issuing forty-five editions, accommodating various styles and forms of poetry, and cultivating nearly one hundred poets, strongly promoting the innovation and development of Taiwanese new poetry.

〈狼之獨步〉 / Ji Xian

I am a wolf walking alone in the wilderness
  not a prophet
  without a single word of sigh

  but with several extremely mournful long howls
  shaking that sky and earth of nothingness
  making heaven and earth tremble like they have malaria
  and raising a cool wind that makes my hair stand on end
  this is a kind of fierce power
    a kind of pleasure

“Wolf’s Solitary Walk” is a depiction of the poet’s inner self-image. In the first stanza, “wilderness” is a highly meaningful image, because the wolf lives in forests and makes a living by hunting other creatures; now placed in the wilderness, with no forest for concealment and no livestock for food, walking alone, the desolation can be imagined.

The poet uses this as a self-metaphor to express personal pride and solitude. Although not accepted by society, he possesses the character of daring to walk alone, never sighing, regretting, or becoming discouraged because of this. Westerners often use “prophet” to refer to poets; the author does not consider himself a prophet, thus affirming that he is an ordinary person.