avant-garde poetry from china 51trait photographs aside, the historical person of the author appears in
biographical notes, and in the argument proper if their story advances
the discussion. I consider authorial intent to be unknowable and ir-
relevant, the only relevant intent being that of the text and that of the
reader, once they meet. After Hugo Brems I hold that for poetry of
the sort that is considered in these pages—different from premodern
and Maoist traditions—what matters is not the emotion that creates
the poem but the emotion that the poem creates.^59 Accordingly, I take
declarations of authorial intent as statements made by authors in their
capacity as readers. Case studies of individual oeuvres are not sur-
veys or summaries but each have a particular focus, identified in the
chapter titles. They are complemented by chapters that take their cue
from moments in literary history that transcend the individual. Some
additional remarks on theory and methodology follow below.
The selection of a dozen voices in text and metatext from among
scores of widely published poets and poet-critics entails the act of can-
onization and at the same time remains a personal affair. Canoniza-
tion, of course, is rarely objective or systematic, whether by design or
with hindsight. It is at best intersubjective, and usually subjective on
individual and collective levels, and it can indeed be coincidental and
arbitrary. I hold, however, that each of the authors studied in these
pages has had demonstrable impact in the public domain and made
distinct contributions to the avant-garde’s multidimensional discourse
as a whole. While this study doesn’t attempt anything like a full over-
view of avant-garde poetry from China, it does hope to give the reader
a rough idea of what such poetry is all about, with reference to critical
discourse to date and facilitating access to the material through the
research bibliographies mentioned in the preface.^60
Twelve Case StudiesThe case studies start in the early 1980s, after Obscure Poetry, which
has been well covered in previous research.^61 Han Dong’s poetry
(chapter Two) has often been discussed in terms of its resistance to
Obscure poetics. This is a notable part of the story, but negative defi-
(^59) Brems 1991: 137.
(^60) Van Crevel 2007, 2008a and 2008b.
(^61) See note 23.