what was all the fuss about? 429Writing”—spokespeople for an “inner circle” have no way any longer
of upholding their make-believe “fairness and authority,” their attitude
toward poetry and poets is nothing but “Prosper those who are with us,
perish those who are against us,” they dare, utterly evil, besiege the au-
thor—a poet, and this goes to show that these “New Tide Poetry critics”
have never respected poetry. Their true face is now there for all to see.“Besieging the author” refers to Popular accounts of the Panfeng con-
ference claiming that several Intellectual authors had physically laid
siege to Yu Jian or Yang Ke. These were dismissed by their alleged
besiegers.
Both specialized and general media would seem to have worked to
the advantage of the Popular camp. First, if Cheng Guangwei’s ap-
propriation of the concept of Poetry of the Nineties was objectionable
to many, it was not a consciously polemical maneuver. Starting with
Yang Ke’s yearbook and Yu Jian’s “The Light,” however, the Popular
response was just that. As such the Popular side dealt the first blow
and a few more, and it appears to have been more active in seeking
publicity throughout. Second, as far as the broad reception of polemi-
cal discourse is concerned, this naturally rewards anti-elitist sentiment
and the shock value of invective. Popular contributions to the debate
tended to be more spectacular and suited to the sensationalism inher-
ent in most media. In the rest of 1999 and 2000 the Popular side con-
tinued to dominate the debate.
Friends in Letters, for instance, published two more eye-catching piec-
es. One, in the July issue, is “Has Poetry Really Lost Its Readers?”
(䆫℠ⳳⱘ༅এњ䇏㗙৫, #34) by Xiangzi, widely believed to be a
pseudonym of Yu Jian. The article does contain argumentative, ter-
minological and linguistic clues to that effect. Xiangzi reassures the
reader that only bad—Intellectual—poetry has lost its readers. The
article is rare in that it supports the Popular cause but acknowledges
that good—Popular—poetry is by nature a marginal phenomenon
and cannot be appreciated by many.
In addition, in November 1999 Friends in Letters featured Yi Sha’s
long article “End of the Century: Why the Poets Are Going to War”
(Ϫ㑾: 䆫ҎЎԩ㽕ᠧҫ, #75), which simultaneously appeared in
Poetry Reference as “Two Questions against One Background: The Pan-
feng Poetry Conference as I Experienced It” (ϸϾ䯂乬ϔϾ㚠᱃:
៥᠔㒣ग़ⱘⲬዄ䆫Ӯ). When reprinted in Yang Ke’s next yearbook,
the one covering 1999, it was still entitled “End of the Century,” which