what was all the fuss about? 413As a poet of the Chinese language, my sorrow lies in not having been
born in the days of [Tang and Song dynasty poets] Li Bai and Su Shi.Like Yu Jian, too, Xu is ready to do battle on behalf of his ideals:
I have a responsibility to protect the soberness, cleanliness and fairness
of the Chinese poetry scene, and I cannot let a small handful of pedantic
literati slackly gain undeserved reputations, while destroying literature
and the Chinese language.The phrase a small handful of pedantic literati takes us straight back to the
spring of 1942 in the Communist base areas, when Maoist literary pol-
icy was taking shape, and the same is true for Xu Jiang’s fondness for
calling the Intellectuals comprador-poets (фࡲ䆫Ҏ). The echoes of
orthodoxy also run through Xu’s “Ordinary People’s Right to Poetry”
(֫Ҏⱘ䆫℠ᴗ߽, #25) and through his most substantial and acrimo-
nious contribution to the Polemic, “The Noxious Poetry Scene” (Р⚳
Ⰸ⇨䆫യᄤ, #16). This long article appeared in the March 1999 is-
sue of Friends in Letters. Having earlier published Shen Haobo’s “Who’s
Fooling ‘the Nineties,’” this monthly magazine would continue to sup-
port the Popular side. In “The Noxious Poetry Scene,” conjuring up
the image of a miasma rising from the swamps of literature, Xu levels
wide-ranging accusations at the Intellectual camp and blames Cheng
Guangwei for leaving the reader with this impression (p6):
All Chinese poets of the Nineties are a bunch of sickly aphasia patients,
not one of them can speak in plain words!... If it weren’t for the fact that
I write poetry myself, even I would almost believe what he has to tell us:
poets aren’t normal people!The article is divided into three parts, with subheadings “Those An-
thologies,” “Those Poetry Awards” and “Those Poets.” The first con-
tains yet more devastating criticism of Cheng’s anthology. The second
is about the corruption Xu Jiang perceives behind poetry awards con-
ferred in the name of Liu Li’an, also known as Anne Kao, patroness
of the avant-garde at the time and perceived by some to be partial
to the Intellectuals. The third is a remarkable call to poets to behave
themselves (p7):
[The poets] are lacking in discipline—long-haired or with shaved heads,
living vagrant lives, giving speeches, reciting poetry, cadging meals, talk-
ing all sorts of strange prattle, presumptuous and full of themselves.