440 chapter twelve
Jiang (#108) even hinting at possibilities for reconciliation, saying that
this was in the interests of Chinese poetry as a whole and invoking the
beginning of a new century as an opportunity for a fresh start.
Viewed in this light, the unabashed partiality of He Xiaozhu’s Select-
ed Chinese Poems emanates a sense of closure, reflecting the stalemate
in which the two camps now found themselves. The same goes for
Chinese Poetry: Memorandum for the Nineties (#85), the above-mentioned
collection of essays edited by Wang Jiaxin and Sun Wenbo, with the
editors disdaining to look beyond their own literary loyalties and
stubbornly reenacting Cheng Guangwei’s appropriation of a chrono-
logical category for a particular literary persuasion. Following “Start
from a Misty Drizzle,” Wang’s introduction, the collection includes
some forty critical articles from the 1990s. It is a strictly Intellectual,
one-sided selection of material, with a few outsiders to the Polemic
thrown in for good measure: mostly commentators who are neutrally
critical of Popular discourse, such as Zhou Zan (#88), Yang Xiaobin
(#73), Geng Zhan chun (#6, 76) and Jiang Tao (#62). The editorial
policy of Chinese Poetry implies that Popular contributions need not be
regarded as anything more than transient fashions of the day. This
impression is maintained throughout the book’s appendices. The first
of these contains the “Annals of Poetry of the Nineties” (90ᑈҷ䆫
℠㑾џ) by Zi An, previously published in Mountain Flower under the
author’s customary name of Wang Jiaxin (#67). This was immediately
attacked for its partiality by Yi Sha in “Wang Jiaxin’s Forged Records
of the Historian” (⥟ᆊᮄӾ䆄, #87) in the January 2000 issue of
Friends in Letters, and later by Xu Jiang in “Eyes Turned Green” (ⴐ
㓓њ, #108) in the 2000 issue of Poetry Reference. The second and third
appendix in Chinese Poetry are a discussion of 1990s poetical terminol-
ogy by Chen Jun and an index to theoretical and critical essays and
essay collections from the 1990s by Liu Fuchun and Zi An / Wang
Jiaxin. All this makes for a bizarre, complete absence in Chinese Poetry
of those considered to be formidable enemies—Yu Jian, Yi Sha, Xie
Youshun and so on—judging by the unforgiving way several of the
book’s contributors take them to task. For Popular poetry and its im-
mediate forebears, this is not a memorandum but an oblitterandum
instead. When asked about the exclusion of Popular contributors,
Wang Jiaxin at first called the authors in question uncooperative, and
then added that he hadn’t bothered to contact them.^21
(^21) Personal communication, August 2000.