“The Less Said, the Better”

“Blending poetry and politics has always been one of the most onerous and perilous literary projects in China, not least in the current socio-political climate of Xi’s regime, and all the more so since the onset of the Coronavirus crisis, now a worldwide threat to our health, thought, and humanity. Censorship and self-censorship play a role in the spread of misinformation and disinformation, not to mention that contemporary Chinese society — as is the case for the rest of the world — subjects life, knowledge, and truth to shifting “realities” in the virtual world. In Duo Yu’s three poems below, we can see that the poet has questioned, doubted, or negotiated with the transparency of poetry and aesthetics when the environment itself does not privilege lucidity.”