Online Avant-Garde Poetry in China Today

Abstract

According to a recent estimate by the poetry critic Chen Zhongyi (Chen 2006), there are approximately two million new poems produced annually on Web sites in China today. My own research (Day 2006) lends credence to Chen’s rather conservative claims that there are at least three hundred poetry Web sites operating online in China and to his estimate, based on conversations with Web site operators, that on average twenty new poems appear daily on such sites. Chen’s numbers refer to all poetry activity on the Internet in China, the great bulk of which is in “new poetry” forms. Poetry lovers and scholars seeking to “discover” poetry that meets their tastes or interests are bound to be initially nonplussed by such profusion and at a loss as to how to approach what at first glance can be described only as an anarchic state of poetry.

Net Servers

On a silver screen

A crowd of young men and women

In confusion

Here

Play and frolic

Here

Practice evil and randomly do over others

Here

Run mad, go wild, stir up emotion

The silver screen

Modern technology

A crystallization of human wisdom

Crystallizes in man, the soul of all things

Here

There’s darkness and enlightenment

worship of the lofty and the low

embellishment and anti-embellishment

bright things and trash

Poetry

This long-forgotten thing

Here a field for her to be

(Artisan of Flowery Rocks RS 2006)