Poetry Can Challenge, Too A Few Thoughts on the Poetry of Yi Sha

Abstract

Chinese literary critic Tang Xin's essay argues that Yi Sha's poetry offers readers one of the most compelling responses to the unfathomable complexities of modern China. According to Tang Xin, the poet's early combination of plain, often vulgar, spoken language coupled with the use of pastiche, his keen eye for parody, and a documentary ethics have made him a poetic force to reckon with over the last two decades. Yet Tang Xin also exposes readers to some of the more unexpected turns the poet has taken over the last decade, including his epic poem “Tang,” in which Yi Sha weaves his current poetic concerns into a broader cultural quilt of poetic vocabularies and themes inherited from Classical Chinese poetry and poetics, leading to what Tang Xin argues is a uniquely Chinese postmodern poetics that avoids common dichotomies to find a balance between cultural deconstruction and reconstruction.