thanatography and the poetic voice 105As measured against the impact of Haizi’s poetry during his lifetime,
commentarial and commemorative practice are disproportionate. This
is precisely the position of a small number of dissonant voices, barely
audible amid the general eulogy. Cheng Guangwei, for instance, notes
in 1991 that
commemoration of the poet cannot take the place of cool-headed criti-
cism, and his biography should no longer serve as reference material for
scholarly critiques.In 1999, in a book called Assassins of Fashion: Three Musketeers Challenging
Fashion (ᯊᇮᴔ: ϝࠥᅶᣥᯊᇮ), co-authored with fellow poets
and literary provocateurs Xu Jiang and Qin Bazi, Yi Sha observes that
Haizi’s renown is a direct consequence of his death. Yi Sha recalls how
as early as 1990, when poets and critics had begun to make Haizi a
“martyr of poetry”—in Rimbaud’s words—he had made a point of at-
tacking them for advocating Haizi’s style and creating an atmosphere
that stifled pluriformity in poetry. Yi Sha’s own breakthrough as a poet
came in 1994 with the appearance of his collection Starve the Poets (体
⅏䆫Ҏ). The title poem is a dig at Haizi, Luo Yihe and other poets
in whose work the word 呺ᄤ ‘wheat’ occurs frequently, leading to
association with the (Chinese) countryside and the natural world, and
with (Chinese) ethno-cultural identity. Yi Sha’s satire is also directed at
what he perceives as overblown critical acclaim for the “wheat poets.”
Liaoyuan, for instance, presents Haizi’s and Luo Yihe’s association
with the image of wheat and wheatfields as analogous to Van Gogh’s
association with that of the sunflower, in an early essay and in his later
biography of Haizi. Such praise for the “wheat poets” has by no means
disappeared since. In 2005 Mao Jian approvingly describes Haizi’s
poetry as a “wheat Utopia,” Gao Bo organizes several sections of his
case study of Haizi around his “wheat” and “wheatfields” imagery,
and Liu Shuyuan has this to say:^19
Haizi’s wheatfields are lonely. Lonely wheatfields are the shared back-
ground to our lives as a nation of peasants. Once the endless sufferings
over wheat in our history enter poetry, they turn into a golden light that
refracts all of our lives.(^19) Cheng Guangwei 1999: 222. Yi et al 2000: 115-116, Robb 2000: ch 13-15.
Examples of Haizi’s “wheat” poetry are found in Haizi 1997: 68, 100, 353, 354, 355.
Liaoyuan 1991 and 2001: ch 5, Mao Jian 2005: 226, Liu Shuyuan 2005: 202.