columns for poets and critics and was the first to offer a poetry news
service, carrying up-to-date information on publications, activities,
and prizes, both domestic and international.
Most Web sites and poetry forums tend to be formed by groups of
like-minded poets with a shared illusio, the very establishment of
which amounts to a position-taking activity in the avant-garde subfield
of poetry as defined by the French sociologist of culture, Pierre
Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1993 and 1996). On the Internet in China, this
tendency is confirmed by the names of some sites (such as Object-ism
物wWand Vulgar World Being Here-ismxyz在wW) but is more
likely to be found in explicit statements of poetical tendencies located
on the forum or in the site’s webzines (such as Moved Writing
{|写~, Lower Body d, Trash垃>, and the so-called Low
Poetry 8?movement in general).
However, unlike the “sub-field of high literature” dealt with by
Bourdieu, the subfield I refer to as the “Second World of Poetry” (Day
2005) possesses only an avant-garde and lacks any form of stable
“establishment.” This Second World is largely unseen by the public
inside China and was inaugurated and inspired by the founding of the
unofficially published (or “underground”) Beijing-based literature
journal Today天in 1978. When young, experimental (or avant-
garde) poets found their avenues to official publication blocked by
editorial fiat during the early-1980s, many turned to similar self-
publication activities as individuals or as groups, and this phenomenon
has continued and grown since that time. In this unique situation, the
only valid legitimizing agents are the participating poets and their
unofficial publications—poets may attain greater prestige and thus
greater cultural authority than others due to longer histories of
publication or longer histories and greater accumulated prestige
within the Second World. In this sense, the Misty poets of the 1970s
and early 1980s (the most influential of whom were contributors
toToday) can be seen as taking on the role of an “established (or
‘consecrated’) avant-garde,” as they are to some degree legitimized as
a target for attack by newcomers to the subfield on account of their
earlier and more frequent official publication, and due to subsequent
recognition by literary critics and sinologists. Since 2000, the Internet
has created a situation in which both avant-garde poetry webzines and
Web sites function as “unofficial publications” and as part of the
Second World.
Thus, paradoxically, the appearance of acceptance and occasional
publication of the Second World poets in the CCP-dominated First
World of “official” media in the PRC has a potentially delegitimizing
204 Michael Day