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I met a grass root poet today
I would like to share an amazing story with you.
Today I met a really weird but interesting man at the gate of the school canteen. He is very thin and about fifty years old. He had a white board in his hands saying:" I am the author of these books and I sell them myself." In front of him, there were two piles of books: one was titled "我家乡的那群乌鸦没来过北京（The Group of Ravens in my Hometown Have Never Come to Beijing)", the other is a copybook of calligraphy. I picked up the first one, finding that it's a collection of his poems!! What a surprise! And I read some of them in a limited time (my boyfriend was waiting for me for supper). His poems reminded me of Haizi, a famous Chinese poet who killed himself by lying on the railway in 1989.
I was so excited that I decided to buy one. The poet and salesman wrote a sentence and sign his name for me on the first page. At the same time he shared his book-selling exprience with me. He started from Beijing, then to Gansu Province, and then went all the way down to the south. He rides his three-wheeler with his books in it. His books also sell in the bookstores all over the nation, but in the past half year, the bookstores have sold far less books than his three-wheeler. He said that nowadays few people in China would do what he was doing (writing poems for the grass roots) and every word he wrote is clean (I don't know what does he mean by this). And then he asked me to write something for him, such as my impression of him and the reason why I bought the book. So I said he reminded me of Haizi.
It was so wonderful and I cannot quite calm down even now. When I read his poems, I have the vision that he is reading them as Ginsberg does in the movie Howl. His northern China accent, his heavily tanned face and his calligraphy. So vivid.
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Post comment Comment (2 replies)
- Reply lushanshan9010
- What a man! I am sure I'd like him if I were to meet him myself. Maybe he is one of the brave and intelligent. Tiny but mighty! I do hope one day I could be a person of fighting spirit like him. Many thanks for the sharing of this wonderful story with us here.
- Reply candice028
- I envy him living such a exciting and free life, travelling around the country. But each age has its own problems, I guess he has his agony as well.
Anyway, it is a good way to sell books, especially for poetry, since less and less people read poems today.
