When we Chinese are indulging in and clapping and shouting “Bravo”for the verse “Dark night endowed me with dark eyes，But I use them to seek light。”composed by the poet Gu Cheng，we will not know that the foreign friends sitting with us face to face really cannot come round to the idea of why the open-minded Chinese have finally come to realize that they should seek light with their eyes till this day as the foreigners read the same verse translated into English or other languages.When we have taken pains to translate some beautiful lines of Tang Poetry and poems of Song Dynasty，such as “before my bed a pool of light”，“two orioles amid green willows are chirping，/a row of egrets high up the blue sky is flying”“over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly crows”into English or other languages，foreign friends who love Chinese poetry still cannot tell the difference between ancient poems and modern poems，nor can they know that these poets are people from ancient times or modern times.It is just this kind of embarrassing cultural exchange situation that inspired me with the idea that I should introduce a batch of Contemporary Chinese poets together for worldwide friends who really love Chinese poetry with a form of poems rather than with papers.
在南京的鳳凰台，歐陽江河自信地說：詩歌屬於中年。我覺得此話不無道理。現在我們回過頭來稍微梳理一下就會發現，從1979年到1989年的10年間，中國詩歌進入了一個以“朦朧詩”為代表的輝煌時期；那個時期除了顧城、舒婷、北島、歐陽江河、於堅、翟永明等先鋒詩人以外，還有雷抒雁、李發模、楊匡滿等中年詩人在寫詩，那時的李英、張同吾、查幹等更老一些的詩人也在寫詩，那時的中國詩歌方陣是呈“雁陣型”的，所以出現了一批質量很高的詩歌作品；從1989年到1999年的10年間，中國詩壇就像一個缺氧的池塘，不否認這片池塘裏有魚，但都浮在表麵，浮在網絡上，表麵看來非常喧囂但實際上缺乏“陣型”。這一時期流派林立，主義橫生，但真正有影響的、相對厚重的詩歌作品並沒有產生。從1999年到2008年間，隨著大批“中間代”詩人的回歸，中國詩壇漸次由喧囂轉入理性，一批厚重的，有質量的詩歌作品才在近年不斷湧現出來。