LIU Zhang and his pursuit of poetic beauty

LIU Zhang took up writing in the period of the Great Leap Forward(1958),when the poems,to a certain extent, presented a false picture of peace and prosperity owing to the limitation of the times and political atmosphere. However,as a poet of the peasantor a son of the peasant,he wrote a large number of poems of aesthetic value,rooted in the rural deep soil.After the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977),his poems changed from purity,freshness and liveliness to honesty,deepness and richness.Ever afterwards,facing the real life,he has pursued the true and faith in self,thus many of his poems full of life experience and philosophy reach a state of no self,His Travel to the South marks his tremendous change in poetic style including the content,form and sentiment.Forty years of painstaking work has brought him great successes,so it should be said that LIU Zhang represents an era.