have crept into the creative palette of this new generation of poets. In
addition, he examines the egalitarian benefits of Internet poetry—
there are Web sites where aspiring poets who otherwise would have
little hope cracking the establishment channels to publication can
freely post their work in a wide variety of venues for a number of
different reading constituencies. That his chapter caps the volume is
testament to the fact that this slim work, which does not promise to be
exhaustive or definitive, nevertheless makes strides toward filling
some of the gaps in scholarship on contemporary Chinese poetry, a
field that is still growing and continues to offer fertile ground for
scholars of Chinese literature.
This volume would not have been possible without the hard work
of the contributors and without all the energy generated by a number
of people at the Simmons Conference. On behalf of the contributors,
I also would like to thank Julia Cohen, Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Katie
Fahey and the others at Palgrave Macmillan who have lent their
support to this work, as well as Maran Elancheran and the people at
Newgen Imaging Systems. I add a word of appreciation to the anony-
mous referees, whose constructive comments have improved the
outcome of this project. I also am grateful to Yan Li for permission to
use an image from his “poetry gum” series to grace the book cover. A
grant from the College of Liberal Arts at Washington State University
helped enable me to complete this project. My gratitude to John Kicza,
former Associate Dean, for facilitating that. A few words on practical
matters: Hanyu pinyin romanization is used throughout for the sake
of convenience in reading; traditional or simplified characters are used
depending on the original source; and all translations are those of each
chapter’s author, unless otherwise noted.
Introduction 7