中国作家协会主管

诗歌之胃

“这饥饿的胃，吞下一列奔跑的火车”（诗歌《胃》），多年前，我对诗歌与时代的关系有过如此的表达。我一直以为诗歌有一颗巨大的胃，它能消化橡胶、煤、铀、月亮、昆虫、飞鸟，正如五金厂的机器，“每天吃下铁，图纸∕星辰，露珠，咸味的汗水，它反复剔牙∕吐出利润，钞票，酒巴”。如何让诗歌之胃有效地消化时代这列奔跑的火车，用诗歌将时代与现实的关系呈现出来，将真实的生活与内心的镜像呈现出来，如何将伦理与艺术有机结合起来。我一直在寻找这样一种有体温的诗歌，这种温度从伦理上来源于生活，来源于现实，来源于人，从艺术上来源于被人们忽视的词语中，来源于诗歌内部的技艺。

无论是名词或者动词，都有一个内在暗示的支点，我们要找到它，将内心的镜象呈现出来。科学家阿基米德曾说给他一支点，可以撬起地球，在诗歌中，我们何尝不是用具体语言的支点将整个世界在诗歌中平衡。用词语为支点，撬动现实的世界，用词语让现实伦理与艺术审美达到平衡。我在工厂生活多年，面对的日常生活是细小的螺丝、铁片、塑胶、玩具……这些词语的背后是户籍、订单、经济危机、资本市场，在这些庞大的与细小的事物间，如何用诗歌之胃将它们消化，变为艺术，如何在社会现实这个庞然大物与细小的日常生活间寻找平衡之道，艺术地呈现社会现实。我在诗歌《电子厂》里表达过，“这细小的元件/被赋予了庞大的意义，经济，资本/品牌，订单，危机，还得加上争吵的/爱情”，在细小的电子晶片与经济、资本、品牌间建构内心的诗歌，“可以肯定在电子厂，时代在变小/无限地小……小成一块合格的二元管”。面对社会伦理与诗歌艺术，我选择了一些具有方向性的暗示的词作为某种支点来平衡二者的关系，比如 “她站在某个五金厂的窗口/背对着辽阔的祖国，昏暗而浑浊的路灯用一台机器收藏了她内心的孤独”（诗歌《剧》）。在这句诗中，“窗口”与“路灯”便是这样的支点。“窗口”这个词，它本身具有强烈的扩张性，我将其扩张到一种极致，将其过渡到更为庞大的事物，从“窗口”到“祖国”是一种极致的向外扩张。“路灯”这个词则有收缩性，将这个词不断地压缩，让它从庞大的意象之间返回个体内心的镜象之中，从“路灯”到“内心的孤独”是一种向内性的收缩。在诗歌中精确地寻找这样具有支点性的词语，来实现社会伦理与诗歌艺术巧妙的平衡。

诗歌中的词语具有无限可能性，词的多种意义像不断交叉的路径，不断地蜿蜒伸展交错，让我们的表达有了无限种的可能性。面对自己的现实生活时，将一些具体的事物，比如图纸，铁锈，机台，钢针，螺丝，胶片，合格纸等，不断通过某种暗喻来呈现内心的精神感受。这些支点性的词语有时如一枚铁钉，能将庞大的事物钉在诗歌的墙上，它让图纸铁锈等日常事物发生了巨大而复杂的变化，比如斑驳的铁锈便可以隐喻起伏不定的人生，“铁”可以隐喻不同的内心情感，比如忧伤，疼痛，喜悦等，大大地拓展“铁”在艺术表达中的美学意义。铁、铁锈、起伏不定的人生、内心的忧伤与喜悦等这些事物与情感我们早已知，如何通过有效的词语将其内在关系连接起，让我们的诗歌有了区别于以往作品的新的方式，拓展原来固定的意象审美与情感表达，在我的诗集《黄麻岭》中，我探索对“铁”“雨水”“锣钉”等工业词语在现代诗歌的美学意义，实现诗歌对社会现实的发声。我相信每一件事物中都包含着不同的诗意，诗人们只是在特定的时候发现已存在于它身上的诗意的一部分，诗歌要不断冲破日常事物以往固有的条条框框的樊篱，让它承载新的意义与生命力。

“在胃里藏一个活着的灵魂”（诗歌《胃》），诗歌之胃除了要吞下时代这列“奔跑的火车”外，还应有一个“活着的灵魂”。“活着的灵魂”来自于艺术的本身，也来自于生命的本身。只有用艺术的方法去穿透时代与现实的外部与表面，直抵事物的核心，诗歌才会有“活着的灵魂”。我不断地在诗歌中表达打工生活，不断地从工业区、路灯、流水线、铁片、雨水等去寻找新的意义。当一块铁因为它摆在机台上，或露天，或仓库，或炉火等不同的位置上，我能不能寻找到不同的隐喻与意义呢？它弯曲了，它化着铁水，它变成了某个制品，它生锈了，它涂上油漆了等等，其实在这些变化中，它本身就隐含了不同的暗喻与意义，我们能不能冲破以往固有的条条框框的樊篱，发现新的隐喻与含义，如何打通它们与社会之间的关系，让自己的思想、感情与工业时代的事物保持一种微妙的平衡。如何发现电脑、水泥、高楼、钢铁、网络、塑料等这些工业化时代的词语的诗意，我希望它们，它们和流水、树木、群山等传统的事物一样，都具有诗意，探索这些工业词语的奥妙，认识工业事物的真谛，我一直认为双手建造的事物与大自然赐与的事物都是神圣的，对这些新的事物需要保持恋人一样的热情，热爱着自然也热爱着自身的创造，在这些机器、塑胶中，都饱含了人类自己的智慧。从生活具体的情景与事件、人物中出发，给平凡的人和最不起眼的主题以新的视角，给表达对象以人性与艺术的双层尊严。我不愿意自己的表达对象会在拥挤不堪中被巨大的人群压碎，变成一张面孔，一个影子，一个数字的一部分，变成拥挤的人群挤成一个失踪者，不愿她们在人群中丧失了自己，隐匿了自己。在这个“奔跑的火车”的社会中，我们被数字统计，被公共语言简化，被归类、整理、淘汰、统计、省略、忽视……我觉得自己要从人群中或者繁复的社会中将我表达的对象掏出来，把她们变成一个个具体的人，她们是一个女儿、母亲、妻子、父亲、丈夫……他们的柴米油盐、喜乐哀伤、悲欢离合……她们是独立的个体，有着一个个具体名字，来自哪里，做过些什么，从人群中找出她们或者自己，让她们返回个体独立的世界中，让她们还以人性的尊严。

只有这种尊严才能给“诗歌之胃”“活着的灵魂”，“诗歌之胃”不仅仅吞下时代“这列奔跑的火车”，也有了艺术的尊严，诗歌的尊严。

The Stomach of Poetry

Zheng Xiaoqiong

“This starving stomach swallowed a speeding train” (Stomach). These were the words I used many years ago to describe the relation between poetry and our times. I’ve always believed that poetry has a gigantic stomach able to digest rubber, coal and uranium the same way it can digest the moon, an insect or stray birds. In this sense, it’s just like a factory machine which “feeds on iron and diagrams/ Starlight, dewdrop, salty sweat, it keeps picking its teeth/ Spitting profits, banknotes and alcohol”. I’ve been seeking the kind of poetry that has the stomach to assimilate the fast moving train of this age, poetry that mirrors the reality of this time and the reality of the heart, poetry that interweaves ethics and art, poetry that gives off warmth, a warmth ethically originated in life, reality and humanity, whereas artistically rooted in neglected words and poetic artistry. 

Every noun and verb has an implicit fulcrum which we need to find in order to show what’s inside ourselves. The great scientist Archimedes once said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” Likewise, couldn’t it be that standing on the fulcrum of words, we balance the world through poetry? For on the fulcrum of words, ethics and art also find balance in the real world. I spend many years of my life in a factory coexisting with small things like screws, iron sheets, plastics, toys…But behind these words underlie bigger ones such as housing registration, purchase orders, economic crisis and capital markets. How can the stomach of poetry digest these things, regardless of their triviality or enormousness, and turn them into art? How can we balance the enormity of social reality with the triviality of ordinary life? Just like the description in my poem Electronics Factory: “This tiny little component/a greater meaning conveys, economy, capital/Brand, purchase orders, crisis, and quarrelling on top/Love”, words like microchips, economy, capital and brands inspire my poetry: “In the electronics factory the times are shrinking/unendingly shrinking…up to become a qualified diode”. I tend to use suggestive words with directional meanings as a fulcrum to balance social ethics and poem artistry. For example, in the following poem: “Standing by the window of some hardware factory/ with her back against the boundless motherland, a dim and muddy streetlight hid away her solitude, using a machine” (Drama). On these lines the words “window” and “street lamp” are fulcrums. The word “window” has an expansive nature, which allows it to extend itself to its very limit and convey something as big as the “motherland”. “Street lamp” on the other hand, has a narrowing nature. Its enormity shrinks to the point of becoming a part of an individual emotion such as “solitude”. That is how I find the subtle balance between social ethics and poem artistry: by selecting words in poems as fulcrums to stand on.

Words in poems have an endless myriad of possibilities. Carrying various meanings, extending and intersecting with each other, they offer unlimited possibilities to our expression. In life, tangible things such as diagrams, rust, work boards, steel needles, screws, films and paper can be used as metaphors to convey deep human emotions. Sometimes these fulcrum-words are like iron nails, capable of nailing gigantic matters on the wall of poetry which in turn brings enormous and complex changes to ordinary things such as diagrams and rust. Mottled rust, for example, can allude to the twists of life; iron can convey different emotions like sorrow, pain or joy, which then again provide the word “iron” with a broader aesthetic meaning... We have long known things like iron and rust, we are aware of the twists of life and we are acquainted with emotions such as sorrow and joy, but what we need now are effective words to link the internal relations in order to distinguish our poems from previous artistic works and to challenge the rooted clichés of symbols and emotions. I did my own experiment in my Poetry Anthology Huangma Hill as I explored the aesthetic meanings of industrial words like “iron”, “rain” and “screw” in modern poems, with the aim to allow society to find their own voice in poetry. It is my belief that there is poetry in every object, of which only part is found by poets at some point. Poems need to break free from the fence of stereotypes in order to bring about new meanings and vitality.

“There is a living soul inside this stomach” (Stomach) the stomach of poetry ought to own a “living soul” when swallowing the “speeding train” of this time. This “living soul” finds its source both in art and in life. Only the poems that penetrate the superficial shell of time and reality to reach the very essence of things are poems with a “living soul”. I’ve been writing poems about my life as a factory worker, seeking new meanings from industrial zones, street lights, production lines, iron sheets and rain. Is it possible to look for different metaphors and meanings for the same iron sheet when placed in different spaces such as a machine bed or the open air, a warehouse or a stove fire? Iron can be bent, melted or turned into a product; it can rust, it can also be painted. All those changes and transformation of the same iron: bending, melting, becoming a product, being corroded or painted contain different implications and metaphors for us to discover by breaking free from the shackles of stereotypes. How can we build the link between those meanings and society to maintain a subtle balance between our thoughts, our emotions and things amidst this Industrial Age? How can we find poetry in words like computer, skyscraper, iron, steel, Internet, plastic, to the extent that we do in traditional poetic words like water, trees and mountains, discovering the magic of industrial vocabulary and unveiling the truth of industrial objects? I’ve always believed that both what is built by human hands and what is given by nature is sacred. Therefore, we should cherish our creations no less than we cherish nature, for machines and plastics are too a product of human wisdom. You should represent ordinary people and those least noticed from a human perspective, then you’re dignifying them both from a human and from an artistic point of view. I would never want my art subjects to be crushed by the crowd and just become a face, a shadow, a single digit of a big number or a lost person among the crowd. Nor would I want them to lose or hide themselves in the same crowd. On this “speeding train” of society everyone is numbered, simplified by language, categorized, arranged, eliminated, calculated, omitted and neglected… What I want to achieve is to humanize my subjects in the crowd, turn them into a daughter, a mother, a wife, a father, or a husband…into people with everyday life, joy and sorrow. They are individuals with names, birth places and personal histories. Find yourself or find them, take them out from the crowd and give them back their individual identity and dignity. 

Only this dignity can give a “living soul” to “the stomach of poetry”, so that this stomach, instead of just swallowing the “speeding train” of this age, can truly enjoy the dignity of art and poetry.