Words against words: poetic reflections and linguistic manipulation in Duoduo’s poetry

Abstract

In Duoduo’s poetry since the mid-1980s there is a fundamental paradox which lies in the relation between the aim of his poetry, to which he refers as “Dao”, and his linguistic manipulation. For Duoduo, today’s culture is loaded with overdeveloped theories, and the creativity of poets is seriously undermined by “the invasion of knowledge”. So Duoduo employs meta-poems to express this understanding of language, knowledge, and poetry. His meta-poem often comprises not only an aesthetically constituted poem but also reflections on poetry, especially on its genesis and development in history and personal writing, as well as on how to read and interpret it. Duoduo also employs self-contradictory language to destroy the referentiality and logic of ordinary language. The language of Duoduo’s poems often incorporates great tension and drastic contradictions, which are reinforced by prosodic movements, hence it incorporates the quality of “gesture”. Duoduo’s challenge to normal modes of expressing meaning and representing experience, his pursuit of a new poetic world and linguistic paradigm are now more and more welcome by Chinese readers and younger poets.