Chapter 5 Speech at Symposium on Poetry Issues

Comrade Xie Bingxin expressed his agreement with Comrade Xiao San's opinion: "Don't underestimate new poems and love old poems".She said: I remember that a primary school student once expressed an opinion in "Wen Wei Po", saying that he can recite old poems and he likes them, but he can't recite new poems and he doesn't like them. This makes sense.My experience is that in addition to general needs, people also want to read poetry for entertainment. For example, when they have insomnia, they want to recite some poems, but they rarely recite new poems, because new poems cannot be recited.When I was recuperating in a nursing home in Dalian, I played with a group of children. I read some songs to them. The children liked it very much and learned it very quickly. They could recite six or seven songs a day.For example, I read to them: "Golden Gulu stick, silver Gulu stick, grandpa beats the ban-" I don't need to read on, they said: "Grandma sings." I said: "Grandpa beats the ban, grandma reads." They said: "The voice is wrong, it's grandma singing." I thought, the so-called sounds of nature, maybe this is it.I taught them to read "What kind of vine bears what kind of melon..." in "The Ballad of the Red Flag" three times, and they memorized it, and none of them made a mistake.There are many good new poems, but I would also like to say to the comrades who write new poems, if people can remember new poems, if they don’t read them and forget them, in addition to good content, I’m afraid you should pay attention to the aspect of phonology.

Comrade Xie Bingxin also talked about his experience in writing new poems.She said: Some people may ask, why did you write some short poems when you were young?Why don't you write now?I said, I was young and bold at the time, and I wanted to break through all the constraints. It was easy to write, and I could write hundreds of poems at a time.It's scary to think about it now.Now that I am asked to write, I have more worries, and it can be said that the requirements are high.New poems are not easy to write. (This article is excerpted from "Summary of the Speech at the Symposium on Poetry Issues" in the third issue of "Poetry Magazine" in 1962.)