{"id":1319,"date":"2012-10-30T10:30:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T02:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2012-10-29T00:44:31","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T16:44:31","slug":"300-modern-contemporary-chinese-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"300 Modern & Contemporary Chinese Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Collections of the “three hundred best poems” have been popular in China ever since the Three Hundred Tang Poems<\/em><\/a> \u5510\u8a69\u4e09\u767e\u9996, compiled in 1763 by Sun Zhu \u5b6b\u6d19 (a\/k\/a Hengtang Tuishi \u8861\u5858\u9000\u58eb, “the Retiree from Hengtang”), and that anthology was probably riffing off the Shijing<\/em> <\/a>\u8a69\u7d93 (The Classic of Poetry<\/em>), whose “three hundred poems” were supposed to have been culled by Confucius<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, as reported on Martin Winter’s blog<\/a> some time ago, poet Zhao Siyun \u8d75\u601d\u8fd0 has put together his list of the best poems of the twentieth century (or, from 1917 – 2011), the Three Hundred Chinese New Poems<\/em><\/a> \u4e2d\u56fd\u65b0\u8bd7 300 \u9996. In its breadth it’s not a bad representation of the most significant modern and contemporary Chinese poets; it’s mainland-heavy, at the expense of Hongkong, Macau, and Taiwanese poets, but that’s no surprise. Still, with 236 poets by my count, it’s easy to be broadly representative, but of course it’s limited to only a few poems by each poet, leaving a lot to be desired by way of depth (as a point of comparison, I count 77 in the Three Hundred Tang Poems<\/em>, with some poets having as many as thirty pieces). Here’s the entry, for instance, for Xi Chuan, who at three poems is about as broadly represented as it gets, though only with early poems:<\/span><\/p>\n