英国作家 E·M·福斯特有一次说过他曾设想在《印度之旅》这部书的中部应该有一个“洞”,诗人西穆斯·希内认为在一首诗中也恰好如此,“它将在这些诗作中的中央敞开,以引导读者深入,超越。”当然,问题还在于怎样设置或形成这个“洞”,并对它进行怎样的理解。1991年3月,在北大的“中国现代诗的命运和前景”座谈会上,当人们对诗的当下处境纷纷表示忧虑时,我说到“我现在对‘晚年’感兴趣,想对它进行一些研究。”一些人笑了起来,大概是因为我所说的和会议主题不太协调吧,或是因为那时我才三十来岁,还远远没有到了谈论这类话题的时候。但我知道,这样一个“晚年”其实也就是福斯特和希内所设想的那种 British writer EM Foster once said that he had conceived that there should be a “hole” in the middle of the Book of India trip, and that the poet Sims Hitchone thought it was exactly in a poem, “It will be open in the center of these poems, to guide the reader in-depth, beyond.” Of course, the problem lies in how to set up or form the “hole”, and how to understand it. In March 1991, when people were worried about the current situation of poetry at the forum of Peking University’s “The Fate and Prospects of Modern Chinese Poetry,” I said “I am now interested in ’old age,’ and I want to proceed with it Some research. ”Some people laughed probably because I was talking to the theme of the conference, or because I was in my thirties and I was far from talking about such topics. But I know that such a “later life” is actually what Forster and Hinetch envisioned