Their serious posture, *w+, 我D的{É f领h,
I feel the hope of a new life, |D关怀我D,
The joy in my heart is welling up. 我DÉ ̄ |。
I want to say: A long-awaited desire 。。。
Has finally been realized today.
We are wretched poets,
Nobody paid us heed before,
But today we feel the love.
Chairman Hu, our many Party leaders,
You’re concerned over us,
And we’re so excited.
...
(Little Moon }月< November 11, 2006)
Here, the poet (a woman) immediately responds to the television
broadcast of a speech given by CCP chairman Hu Jintao. This rather
long poem is heavily ironic, listing many events that have occurred on
the avant-garde poetry scene in recent years—events of which Chairman
Hu would not be aware and for which, if he were, he would be unlikely
to have benevolent thoughts. The surname Hu is replaced by an asterisk
in the title of the original forum posting in an apparent effort by the poet
or the managers of the forum to avoid attention from the authorities (his
name appears in the poem itself). In other poems, there are incidences of
hyphens or dashes being inserted between the characters of names, lead-
ing to Marx being rendered as -n-Qor Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
as /Ë/, for example—apparently to decrease Internet searchability.
Another style championed by the Low Poetry Movement is the poetry
of menial workers. The experiences and emotions of workers—a low,
unpoetic form of life by consecrated poetical standards—are desirable
given the relationship such poetry has with universal, China-specific
experience and colloquial language. One of the more prominent of the
Web sites related to such poetry is Menial Worker Poets打a?.
I Write in the Dark of Night 我在2ì写d
我在2ì写d
, 街道<@处奔的外
我在2ì写d制衣厂的女a<她Dc 的
我在2ì写d厂的炉¶v器掉的指
我写到
, , ́, ɳ@愁¡¢者
我写到街道, £¤,
¶¥¦, § ́ ̈©有我óª的地«
我写到厂的炉¶, 暗¬的光, 照<我®s的青春
我写到爱 , 5°的味4, °5天²³样的μ酸
我写到· ̧¹, @收»我¼¦青春的½¾村À
Online Avant-Garde Poetry in China Today 209