Reading Poetry in a Peking University Classroom

Author: Hong Zicheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Spiritual narrative, historical irony, lost imagination. Through the periscope of poetic writing, it is a strange journey across language between memory and representation. I buried myself in reading. I read for a long time. Since the slanting rain began to hit the windows. I didn’t hear the sound of rain, completely absorbed in reading. I looked at every line of text, as if contemplative wrinkles, time, or stopping forward, or flowing backward! The achievements of contemporary Chinese avant-garde poetry are remarkable, yet its bold innovations in aesthetics present certain difficulties for most readers in terms of appreciation. This book is a selection of the content from Contemporary Avant-Garde Poetry Interpretation Lectures by Professor Hong Zicheng, a distinguished literary historian, poet critic, and doctoral supervisor at the Department of Chinese, Peking University. It includes main reports and discussions by over 20 doctoral and master students and young poets during the lectures. The poems discussed are famous and somewhat challenging works by more than 10 active avant-garde poets in the 1990s. The lectures cover many important poetic issues in contemporary China, vividly showcasing the boundless charm of contemporary avant-garde poetry.