From: Chengpu Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 1994 11:02:27 EDT

Dear Shi-Yang:

I just browse the chpoem-list of the past week, and I just want to say: Do
not be too sad by one or two bad news. I really like many of your poems,
though I do not have time to study them carefully--as I have promised you.
Please just continue on. You may or not choose not to publish all of your
new poetrys, but you should never stop writing them. Sometimes I even envy
you--your inspirations and time and energy. Sometimes I was just in the mode
of writing something, but then I remmbered my work for the tomorrow, the
exams in the next week, and had to give up.

For a person who loves life like you, there should never be really anything
as "a real blow". One or two loses does not make a season. I myself have
experienced some of it. For an example, my article "Our Common Chinese
Daydreams" does not have any good reader's responce either, and was
literally rejected by HXWZ and all the other magzines--but I really put my
pains and emotions and hopes in it, right or wrong. However, when I think
about my dearest reader--my own life, I smiled, because I believed that my
heart's true beats will always and ultimatelly echoes in it. (I have just
mail it out again two weeks ago, for you see, I am yet to give up. )
Frankly, now, I no longer beleive that I am writing for the readers--I am
feeling and living, for the happiness of those FEW  whom I am loved by
and whom I love--that is enough, that is enough, well enough...

That bad news may not be bad either. Why not just regard it as a chance
to evaluate your own view of poetry "hard"? In some sense that reader was
right: In my opinion a poem have to be tough and concise, in which a word
has to function like a thousand. I hate to say that a lot of modern poems
are just a collection of emotion pieces, in some kind of twisted and
broken languadge--I am a one who favor the "early" Chinese modern peotrys
much more than the latest. For me I desire something more healthy and
masculine. In my mind, emotion comes and goes, but only those dried ones
can last long.

Thank you for your contribution to the poetry-net; hope to see your
better ones. And here I am also paying a salute to those who spend their
talent, time and energy on the net--for the happiness of all the others.

Regards, CP Wang