Chapter 12. Practical Methods of Modern Poetry Criticism

Section One. The Phenomenon of “Ignoring Theory, Each Displaying Their Own Tricks”

Within the world of Chinese literature, the analysis and criticism of essays, novels, and dramatic works generally follow recognizable conventions—that is, established "patterns." In academic terminology, these are referred to as the methodology of criticism.

In other words, literary criticism does not permit critics to abandon established methodology and engage in arbitrary impressionistic criticism of essays, novels, or scripts. Such criticism is regarded merely as reading impressions that lack theoretical justification, unable to attain scholarly legitimacy or become mainstream criticism.

By the same logic, modern poetry criticism ought to adhere to the methodology of criticism. Yet for a long time, the flourishing phenomenon of "letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred birds sing" in modern poetry criticism has actually implied that the methodology of criticism has often become little more than a formality when applied to modern poetry.

The author has explored the reasons behind this phenomenon of "disregarding theory while everyone displays their own tricks," and offers the following explanations:

(1) The misconception that modern poetry criticism has a low threshold

Many people interested in commenting on modern poetry mistakenly believe that because modern poems are short and require little reading time, they are easy to critique. They therefore assume, quite naturally, that there is no need for painstaking analysis or any critical methodology; they simply share their personal impressions after reading the poem.

(2) Translating modern poetry into everyday language

Many believe that analyzing a modern poem merely requires explaining one's reading impressions and "translating" each stanza into ordinary language that readers can easily understand. Once this has been done, the task of criticism is considered complete.

(3) Inference and speculation are treated as indispensable tools of translation

During this process of "translation," readers are expected to accept all the critic's inferences and speculations without question, regardless of whether they truly reflect the poem itself or the author's original intention, or whether they possess any theoretical foundation.

Because of these misconceptions, the Chinese modern poetry community is filled with literary fortune tellers wandering from place to place. The author jokingly refers to them as "Wang Lu the Soothsayer."

Section Two. The Content of the "Methodology of Criticism"

The methodology of literary criticism differs according to literary genre.

Take novels and films as examples. Both possess narrative structures. Essentially, a novel and a screenplay are both orderly ways of telling a story. Consequently, structuralism and narratology become the core components of their critical methodology.

The words, actions, and thoughts of characters require psychological analysis for proper examination.

Dialogue between characters and narration (voice-over) in films belong to the domain of rhetoric and grammar.

Modern poetry naturally does not possess structures as complex as novels or screenplays. Nevertheless, for narrative poems—such as political poems, social poems, or character poems—structuralism and narratology remain highly applicable.

The arrangement of stanzas requires structural analysis.

The narrative thread within a poem requires narratological clarification.

Rhetoric is, of course, an indispensable tool for analyzing poetic lines and stanzas. Expressive techniques include various rhetorical devices—such as metaphor, personification, hyperbole, synesthesia, and others—as well as formal designs including repetition, parallelism, gradation, anadiplosis, and mutual-reference constructions.

Furthermore, rhetoric itself is founded upon modern aesthetics. For example, description and personification derive from emotional projection, while metaphor originates from imitation.

The grammatical errors (language disorders) and semantic obstacles (semantic barriers) frequently found in modern poetry belong to the fields of grammar and semantics.

Section Three. Well-Reasoned Critical Analysis of Modern Poetry

The author has devoted forty years to writing modern poetry, and thirty years to researching poetic theory, literary criticism, and teaching.

Poets and readers frequently ask questions concerning both the creation and criticism of modern poetry.

The creative process may be broadly divided into three stages:

Conception (association: simple association and creative association)

→ Composition (organization: stanza arrangement and the use of expressive techniques)

→ Revision (adjusting grammar, vocabulary, musicality, and so forth).

The author reserves a more detailed discussion of creative writing for another essay.

Regarding criticism and appreciation of modern poetry, the author shares the following practical experience.

(1) Practical Steps for Modern Poetry Criticism

1. First identify the poem's subject category.

Examples include object poems, character poems, landscape poems, and nature poems.

2. Determine the narrative voice and literary form.

Identify the narrative person, point of view, and whether the poem is written as a letter, monologue, dialogue, narration, and so forth.

3. Summarize the poem's structure.

Discuss the stanza arrangement, introduction, development, transition, conclusion, opening strategy, continuation, ending, and whether the beginning and ending echo one another.

4. Analyze the formal designs and expressive techniques employed throughout the poem.

These include repetition, parallelism, gradation, metaphor, symbolism, synesthesia, hyperbole, temporal and spatial shifts, montage, collage (surrealist techniques), and related devices.

5. Examine how the poem balances reality and imagination.

Discuss the mutual transformation between the concrete and the abstract, and between reality and imagination.

6. If the poem contains a narrative (for example, narrative poetry or social poetry), introduce narratological analysis.

Identify the story's time, setting, characters, and discuss its narrative structure (opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax (suspense)).

7. Discuss the poem's aesthetic characteristics.

Examples include ballad style, symbolism, surrealism, and the artistic atmosphere it creates.

8. Identify possible weaknesses in the work.

Examples include grammatical errors, semantic barriers, unclear associative clues, or broken semantic continuity.

(2) Situations to Avoid

1. Do not indiscriminately quote famous sayings from Eastern or Western poets merely to display literary knowledge, as this easily leads the discussion away from the poem itself.

2. Avoid discussing personal relationships with the author. Mention them only briefly if necessary, lest they blur or divert the focus of criticism.

3. Whenever citing another scholar's viewpoint, always identify the source and never deliberately distort the original meaning.

4. Do not overzealously translate the author's intended meaning in its entirety. Leave room for readers to contemplate the poem on their own.

5. When the clues provided by the poem are insufficient or ambiguous, avoid excessive subjective speculation and inference, and do not force interpretations upon the work.

Section Four. Examples of Modern Poetry Criticism

The Actress / Ya Hsien

At sixteen her name had already drifted into the city,
a melancholy melody.
Those almond-colored arms should have been guarded by eunuchs.
That tiny coiffure made people of the Qing Dynasty break their hearts for her.
Was she Su San?
(A face cracking melon seeds in the garden every night!)
"Bitterness..."
Her hands confined in the cangue.
Some people said
that in Jiamusi she had lived with a White Russian officer.
A melancholy melody.
Women in every city cursed her.

The Performer / Xi Murong

Please do not believe in my beauty,
nor believe in my love.
Beneath a face covered with stage makeup,
I possess only the heart of an actor.
Therefore, please, never—
never take my sorrow seriously,
nor let my performance break your heart.
My dear friend, throughout this lifetime,
I am merely an actor,
forever shedding my own tears
within someone else's story.

These two poems both portray performers on the stage. Both are highly renowned and belong to the category of character poems, sharing thematic similarity.

The Performer adopts the first-person narrative voice, presenting a monologue through the limited perspective of "I." It recounts the speaker's own story and possesses the qualities of autobiographical poetry.

The Actress, by contrast, employs a third-person omniscient perspective. Its protagonist is "she"—a woman who, from the age of sixteen, traveled with an opera troupe, earning her livelihood through performance. The narrator is an unseen observer who gently recounts, through narration, the tragic life of this beautiful but ill-fated woman.

The author of The Actress stands outside the story. He may once have been an admirer of the actress, or perhaps a friend. From the viewpoint of an observer, using plain narrative description, he outlines her lifelong suffering.

When she first appeared on stage in her youth, she attracted the admiration and affection of male audiences, thereby arousing the hostility of many women. Later, rumors spread that she had lived with a White Russian officer. Yet the stigma attached to her never disappeared. Wherever she traveled, local women continued to curse and reject her.

From this description, one may infer that the actress was undoubtedly quite beautiful. The poem's central theme is therefore established upon the motif of a beauty doomed by fate.

In The Performer, the poet concentrates entirely upon the speaker's own experience without involving other characters. The poem emphasizes several central ideas:

(1) A performer's stage performance is simply theater. The performer clearly understands that what appears on stage is fictional emotion.

(2) The performer does not become psychologically confused through immersion in the role. In real life she remains herself; acting is merely the profession by which she earns her living.

(3) The performer deliberately reminds the audience not to become emotionally absorbed in the performance, because the characters and events in a play are fictional and do not deserve to be mistaken for reality.

Although The Actress is slightly shorter in length, its narrative progression is considerably clearer and more complete than that of The Performer. It possesses a full narrative structure that proceeds sequentially through opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax → conclusion.

Furthermore, because it adopts an omniscient narrative perspective, the poem presents its narrative events and character activities with greater objectivity.

The Performer, on the other hand, concentrates primarily upon the poem's central conflict: the distinction between theatrical performance and real life. Strictly speaking, it contains no conventional climax.

In other words, The Performer possesses a relatively narrower narrative scope. Its strength lies in its tight focus, preventing it from degenerating into a merely chronological autobiographical account.

Each poem excels in its own way. The monologue form more readily penetrates the protagonist's inner emotions and psychological state, whereas the narrative form offers a more comprehensive view of the story, allowing readers to grasp its complete development from beginning to end.