Poetry in Crisis

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese poetry has been misread, appropriated, and run down with various cultural purposes and/or ideological agendas just like in any historical period, and its circulation does not always meet with open arms. On February 12, 2020, Changjiang Daily published Xiao Chang's controversial critical commentary entitled, "Rather than ‘Mountains and Rivers under the Same Sky,' I Would Like to Hear ‘Wuhan, Add Oil!,'” ("Xiangbi ‘Fengyue tongtian,' wo geng xiang tingdao ‘Wuhan jiayou!'”) targeting two lines from Prince Nagaya's Sinitic poem "Occasion of the Embroidered Robes” ("Xiu jiashayi yuan”). This essay revisits the history of this poem and the circulation of this poem during the epidemic in Wuhan. By contrasting Xiao Chang's implication that poetry was inopportune, obscure, and barbaric, this essay argues that his article, as a voice from the authority, was intended to impose constraint on poetry writing, which further reveals a crisis for the poetry writing in China today. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.