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184 Conclusion I began this book by suggesting that modern poetry in China finds itself in a uniquely paradoxical situation. Written off by many journalists , netizens, and critics as hopelessly marginalized and out of touch with contemporary reality, it somehow manages to cling to some of its allure as the epitome of Chinese cultural achievement and the favored literary activity of many of the nation’s elites. There are four possible solutions to this apparent paradox, which turns out to be not so paradoxical after all. In line with my cultural studies approach, these solutions are not intended as perfect or complete explanations, and neither are they mutually exclusive: each is tied to the other, and none could exist on its own. While they are derived from the situation of modern poetry in early twenty-first-century China, I would propose that they have implications for other areas of culture and countries, especially for cultural forms whose auras are thought to be weakened in an era of commercialization and mass media. I will also reconsider the question of agency or power, pay a return visit to the poem by Li Wei that opened the book, and end by contemplating the cultural implications of these new media scenes in an ever more technologically advanced future. The first solution to the paradox of poetry’s supposed marginalization lies in the concept of scenes. One reason many people are under the mistaken assumption that poetry no longer exists (or if it does, must be hobbling along on its last legs) is that they are not part of the scenes in which cultural activity takes place, which I have defined as historically conditioned and loosely affiliated networks of people Conclusion 185 involved in producing, circulating, and evaluating the contents of a cultural form. Cultural activity looks startlingly different depending on where the observer is positioned in relation to a scene. Being on the inside does not mean that you share with all other scene participants the same understanding of what your cultural form entails or how it should be produced and presented to others, but it does mean that you are more likely to be privy to the contentions and incidents that shape its calendar year and to the sense of liveliness and effervescence that emerges when people are connected to each other and when culture happens, in the present tense. Being on the outside does not preclude you from knowing that the scene exists, as you can always attend events as a member of the public or hear about it from time to time in the media. It does mean, however, that you are much less likely to understand the norms that shape this area of culture or be familiar with the hierarchies of people and discourses that give it shape. Scenes tend to be tight-knit, especially in the case of traditionally “high” forms of culture; while its members may talk about desiring a bigger audience or needing to “open up” to make a public impact, they on the whole prefer to be responsible for their own gatekeeping practices. My second related argument is that the category of “poetry” is a social and not purely a textual form: it cannot be reduced to individual poems and any attempt to do so would be bound to fail, as it is usually the case that neither audiences nor authors can reach a consensus on what precisely “a poem” might be. Instead poetry encompasses both poems and all the activities that immediately surround them, including the literary, the economic, the political, and the mediatic . If modern poetry’s health is judged solely by the percentage of print books and journals dedicated to it or the amount of media coverage given to the publication and discussion of modern poems, then yes, it is undeniably marginalized and cannot possibly hope to compete with the more entertainment-oriented genres and media of fiction , television, film, popular music, and computer games. But if you also take into account the space that face-to-face poetry activity takes up within Chinese cities and the volume of poetry-related activity and communication that occurs online, then the conclusion is quite the opposite: the category of poetry still occupies a vital position in contemporary Chinese culture. A related point concerns the question of where exactly the margins lie. Michelle Yeh once suggested that modern poetry has always existed in a state of marginality that, over time, has come to define its intellectual...

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