Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.4, 2023

How a New Metrical Style Is Possible: Rearguing the Metrical Problems of New Poetry

(Abstract)

Pan Jianwei

The new metrical poetry can borrow the rules of staccato and rhyme from Chinese five-character quatrain and seven-character quatrain and Western metrical poetry, as well as the rhythmic patterns of ci genre. Compared with the “strict repetition” of the old metrical style, the new metrical style is loose, and thus can accommodate more “modern sensibility;” as opposed to the “variant repetitions” of free verse, it is regular and easier to create a sort of “fusion of horizons” between the writer and the reader of the poem.