写出爱情的“最大公约数”
——浅谈冰花情诗的美学追求
刘荒田 (美国华文文艺界学会会长）
且咀嚼这样的诗：“床前明月光，疑是地上霜。举头望明月，低头思故乡。”它被一代代游子吟咏，不思乡还好，一旦思了，贪图省事也罢，先入为主也罢，这“现成的”就浮现脑际。再看：“梳洗罢，独倚望江楼。过尽千帆皆不是，斜晖脉脉水悠悠，肠断白萍洲。”这算不算人类情感之库里“闺怨”类的现成东东呢？谁一旦起了相思，在自己的情话想好之前，这一阙先“蹦”出来了。
从这些经典，我想到，冰花也属于这一类，她是立志写最具普遍性的爱情诗，感动最多有情人的“诗的天使”。
且看冰花是怎样进行这一赔率极低的“豪赌”的。首先得有本钱，她的本钱，就是悟性。她的爱情诗，总括而言，动力完全来自对世俗压迫的对抗。她的灵感之水总是储在压力锅内，红尘里的一切——道德的规范，世俗的拘囚，物资的掣肘，传统的束缚，理性的警戒，诸如此类都在给它加温，锅哧哧作响，锅身震动，只差没爆炸。蒸汽从所有缝隙冒出，这就是诗的张力。此所以读冰花的诗，总马上感受到行将接近沸点的热度。别以为诗人不安于室，老嫌婚姻是不加茶叶老添水的茶壶，跃跃欲试于找外遇。如果你这么看，就太庸俗化了。诗人何曾在世俗社会找另一个爱人？她一直在同诗谈恋爱，同高蹈在性灵中的缪斯过招。一似青春男女的初恋，一头栽进去，爱得鬼哭狼嚎，其实不过是和自己的荷尔蒙谈，对方不过是自家情欲那充满偶然性的容器。这一至关重要的底气，以《荷的心事》为证：“一朵含苞待放的夏荷/心在心事中裹缠/谁能把裹缠片片剥开/谁能把荷的心呼唤出来//无缘的人啊/不是走得太急/就是来得太晚//甜蜜的心在等待中/化为了苦莲/结果无法改变/荷的心事/成了一孔孔的藕断丝连//”
有了“本钱”，还得善于运笔。对神乎其技的冰花，我拣出两条来谈谈，一曰提炼出诗的概括性。她的成功之作，都是以爱情的“最大公约数”为依据的。概括就是覆盖，不命中人性的、感情的共同靶心，就难以引起普遍的共鸣。要做到这点，不能拘泥于过分琐屑的偶发事件，不能胶着于一己过分细腻的感触，不能纠缠于过分个人化的情绪。然而，人类诸般感情中，最隐秘最私人的，要数爱情。这么一来，写出让恋爱中人和过来人都惊叹为一句：“好！人人心中皆有，口中皆无的情愫出来了”的佳篇，无异于做一件让所有人都觉得适合的衣服，开一帖包医百病的药方。其挑战性不言而喻。依我看来，她胜任愉快，尽管写作过程中不乏不可为外人道的彷徨、焦虑乃至自我否定，也未必出手必是神品。且看《等待》：“想你/燃一支幽香/祈祷你的安康//想你/轻抚你的照片/默诵我的叮咛//想你/在仲夏的夜晚/让玫瑰花香/飘落在你的床边/用丝绸做扇/赶走你的疲倦//-----想你/是我心中的秘密/如雨/点点滴滴数着搏脉//想你/是我心中的甜蜜/如歌/飘飘逸逸抒发着情怀//想你/是我最温柔的等待//”恋爱中人，谁没等待过？好在都没等成洪水来时抱桥柱死掉的尾生。诗人把大众化的等加以渲染，曲尽女性在这一过程的幽密心思。结尾尤其妙：想你，是我最温柔的等待。想就是等，等就是想。想多久就等多久。这等痴心！普通吗？当然；绝吗？绝。我简直要把这貌似平平无奇、细细品咂却隽永无比的短句，誉为现代的“盈盈一水间，脉脉不得语”。
二曰向古典靠拢。要使诗作易于流传，须琅琅上口，易于记忆。欲达此，则要剔掉流行新诗散漫拖沓的通病。冰花的诗，多数排列整齐，多用排比、对仗，注意匀称和整饬，适宜朗诵，这是她从旧体诗和早期新诗借鉴的，但经过改造，并无削足适履的痛苦。“还是徘徊在陌生里吧/让我在梦里读你/从春天到冬季//还是放飞在遥远里吧/让我隔岸看你/从黄昏到晨曦//”（《五月的花》），这是递进式。“六月的花园/每晚都有新的幼芽冒尖/每晨都有新的花朵绽开//六月的海洋/拥抱蓝天的梦想/舞动浪花的翅膀//”，这是并列式。她的短诗，基本押韵，未必隔行押，有时以韵脚遥作呼应，蕴藏画龙点睛的匠心。
总得来看，冰花是有独特的美学追求的卓越诗人，她的诗路，比起网上一抓一大把的诗人来，艰难得多，寂寞得多。这样的冒险，成功了，就是《唐诗三百首》里以一首《登鹳雀楼》独步千古的王之涣；失败了呢？也不要紧，继续写就是，反正来日方长，冰花，努力吧！
2010年7月5日
“The Highest Common Factor” of LOVE
About Bing Hua’s Aesthetic Pursuit
By Liu Huangtian
Just to savor such a poem: “The bedframe sees the moonlight slant, like frost being sprayed to the ground. I tilt back to gaze at the bright moon, and then lapse into yearning for hometown. –Li Bai (701-762 AD)” Generations of those who are away from home will croon the poem when they are homesick, either because the poem is ready and handy or because it simply imposes itself into one’s mind. Another piece: “Freshened up, she’s alone in the towering gazebo. A thousand sails have passed without his; the sun’s faltered over the shimmering flow. She’s forlorn by the duckweed shoal. -Wen Tingyun (812-870? AD). ” Isn’t this an item labeled “boudoir sighs” in the inventory of human sentiments? The stanza will pop up to whoever pining for the dearest, before own words line up for the Affectionately his or hers.
These classics bring me to thinking that Bing Hua also belongs to the group of poets who set their minds to writing about LOVE as universally assumed; she is an “angel” whose poems strike a chord with as many affectionate hearts far and wide.
Let’s see how Bing Hua has handled this “roulette game” she could hardly lose. She must first of all have her capital, which is her astute sensitivity to human sentiments. Her love poems, generally speaking, are motivated by her resistance to the pressing worldly views. As if the water of her inspiration were inside a pressure-cooker, everything out there—moral etiquettes, worldly constraints, material bounds, traditional confines, rational admonitions, and all such paraphernalia— produce the increasing heat to make the cooker squeal and rattle, hence on the verge of blowing out; but the steam could hiss out through all the seams, constituting the tensile of poetry, so a reader always feels the heat just seconds short of boiling. Don’t get it wrong by linking a wanton life style with the poet, as if her own marriage to her tasted like a tea pot filled only with water and no tea leaves; no thinking could be more vulgar than that. When has the poet ever attempted to seek for any extramarital affairs? All the while she has been in love with her own poetry, drilling her techniques with Muse in her soul. That is her powerhouse, as instilled in her “Lotus’s Obsession: A summer lotus bud, yet to bloom/ Has an obsession wrapped in its heart/ Who can peel off those wrapping petals/ Who can call out the wrapped heart// People not karma-bound to her/ Have either rushed by too quickly/ Or arrived too late// For while waiting/ Her succade heart has turned into bitter seeds/ An irreversible plight/ The lotus’ obsession / Remains, though her root is pocketed with holes//”
Apart from “capital,” one must possess dexterity on the craft of writing. I would like to talk about two aspects in Bing Hua’s poetic flair. The first is her distillation of the thematic generality. All her poetic successes have evolved from “the highest common factor” of LOVE as universally assumed; a poem won’t stir up expansive echoes unless it has hit the center of the universal human sentiments. To achieve that goal, one must skip the minutiae of fortuitous events and see beyond one’s own fastidious moods. Ironically, LOVE is also among the innermost sentiments of all individuals. “Good! This is how I feel in the heart but unable to utter.” If whoever was or is in love reads a poem and makes that exclamation, it is then a good poem, like a garment that would fit all, or a prescription that would cure all illnesses. Of course, one must take a tremendous challenge to achieve that end. As far as I can see, Bing Hua is fully capable of fulfilling her tasks with delight, despite of the many personal qualms, anxieties, or even self-denials, and that not every single poem of hers proves to be a prodigious piece. Take a look at “Waiting: When I long for you/ I burn an incense stick/ And pray for your health and safety// When I long for you/ I gently touch your photo/ And murmur my caring words to you// When I long for you/ At a summer night/ I let the rose aroma/ Waft to your bedside/And make a silk-fan/ To shoo away your fatigue//…Longing for you/ Is a secrete in my heart/ Like rain/ It pitter-patters at the beat of my pulse// Longing for you/ Is what sweetens my heart/Like an ethereal song/It expresses my feeling // Longing for you/ Is my tenderest waiting for you//” Who has not waited once while in love? The poet has embellished the WAITING with a meticulous depiction of a woman’s innermost thoughts. The ending is especially witty: “Longing for you， Is my tenderest waiting for you.” So longing for is waiting for, and vice versa; I will wait as long as I choose to. Such an obsessive crush! Simple, of course; pithy, by all means! This line is so unceremonious and yet so refined with taste that I would almost honor it to be the modern version of “but eyeing each other, over the quivering water. (from one of 19 Ancient Chinese Poems).”
The second aspect in Bing Hua’s poetic flair is her bearing to the Chinese classical styles. Rhythmic and cadenced lines are easier to read, hence an enhanced circulation; but one must chisel off those straggling stubble-like sentences the contemporary Chinese poems are rife with. Most of Bin Hua’s poems are neat in formation, with syntactic and rhythmic parallels here and there through the whole piece, suitable for recitation. She has achieved those through emulating China’s traditional poetic styles as well as those of the earlier modern Chinese poems; the adaption is seamless, without the feel of one’s foot squeezed into someone else’s shoe. Read this: “Let me wander in the strangeness/ So, I can read you in my dreams/ From spring to winter// Let me fly to the remote distance/ So, I can watch you from the other river bank/From dusk to the dawn in sunglow// (Flowers in May)” One can see the steady progression in parallel syntax there. Similarly: “In June’s garden/ Every night, new plants sprout/ Every morning, new flowers bloom// June’s ocean/ Is a dream to embrace the blue sky/ Is a wing to heave splashes// (The Amorous Knot of June)” Obviously the parallel patterns dominate the stanzas. Moreover, most of Bing Hua’s short poems claim a quiet rhyming scheme, not necessarily in every other line; sometimes it is just an echo across the stanzas, thus constituting the poet’s golden-touch within her poetic craftsmanship.
In sum, Bing Hua is an accomplished poet with her own unique aesthetic pursuit; she’s been on a lonesome trudge with a lot more hardships than the throngs of online-poets ever know. Should her adventure succeed, Bing Hua would become another Wang Zhihuan- a Chinese poet (688-742 AD), who achieved his thousand-year fame merely with his poem “On the Stork Tower.” But what if she fails? It really doesn’t matter, as she can continue her writing for the years to come. Keep writing, Bing Hua!
——Translator Wang Dajian
[ 此帖被冰花在05-31-2026 06:58重新编辑 ]
