"The rise of vernacular verse in China in the early twentieth century coincided with a period of intense social dislocation. While ours is not a history book, the momentous social and political transformation in early twentieth-century China is the backdrop (in a sense even the engine) of the rise of New Poetry. Many of the poems were written in response to political and/or social events: imprisonment, battle, Japanese burning of villages and bombing of cities, wanderings through the war-ravaged countryside, and the deprivations of the poorest peasants of the great northwest. Other poems speak of the authors' experiences of the joys and sorrows of parenthood and family life, often set against the backdrop of war. The goal is to give a nuanced picture of the astonishingly rapid development of vernacular verse in China from its first appearance during the May Fourth Movement through 1949, the year of Mao's takeover and his imposition of censorship."-- Provided by publisher.