“Society with bad food and bad poetry” – True statement or innocence?

Recently, a funny story took place within the framework of a workshop on building and developing literature and art in the new era. Specifically, many delegates mentioned the issue of “society are doing bad poetry”.

It even made the headlines of a well-read article. Of course, I understand, when it comes to “bad poetry”, it’s not just poetry, but it’s also literature, music, painting, etc., and many separate branches that make up the whole artistic life.

Some delegates said: Life turned away from poetry in general because readers now don’t read.

Saying that is unfair to the reader, and unfair to the publishing industry.

Since July 1, 2005, when the Law on Publication 2004 took effect, the publishing market has had a marked change. This year, according to data from the Publication, Printing and Distribution Department, Ministry of Information and Communications, the number of electronic publications in 2022 is estimated at 3200 with 15 million users (equivalent to 32-35 million users) books are read), an increase of 59% compared to 2021.

Regarding printed books, by the end of November 2022, the whole publishing industry had 29,781 books (down 16%) with 469,966,348 copies (up 8%).

Statistics also show that the average production level/person/year reached 4.9 copies (excluding e-books and audiobooks) – an increase of 5.4%. If including e-books and audiobooks, it will be about 5.2-5.3 copies/person/year, of which 2.7 copies are not textbooks and general reference and supplementary books.

Publishers’ revenue is estimated at 3,200 billion, up 6%.

That means people still read a lot of books. The stats don’t lie about this.

In fact, life is “overwhelming” with bad poetry, not without good things, if you consider the “law of quantity – quality” – one of the basic laws belonging to the philosophical foundation that we believe in.

Friedrich Engels is very clear: “Mere changes in quantity will, to a certain extent, translate into qualitative differences” (C. Marx and Engels: Complete Volume, Publication Press). National Politics, Hanoi, 1994, volume 20, page 179)

This is also not strange or contradictory to a principle of Eastern philosophy – “Together with change, change with communication” (I Ching).

That is, we have the right to believe that, according to the above principles, life has many bad works and needs to be more bad before good works come out. Mechanically, there is probably no state as climactic as the state of “overeating” – and it is happening as many Writers claim. So from now on, we have the right to dream about works of art, right?

No one can stop dreaming. But perhaps, the problem for the Writers here is not to condescend to comment on a life that is “overwhelming” but to ask the question”: Why Star no (or no) good poetry, no good works of art? Why, in a life filled with material like this, there are no works that can be recorded? Is the bad not to the point of “surreal”? Or by limited talents? Or the Mind – Mind of the Writer has not really accompanied?

More than half a century ago, poet Luu Quang Vu wrote:

“It’s easy to flatter life, it’s easy to curse life

Just building a life is difficult.”

Perhaps, instead of commenting on life with an innocent posture, the Writers should be silent and work hard to write. The work will speak for itself when it reaches the People. And the People are usually never wrong in assessing the good and bad things in life.