52 chapter one
nition is as problematic for individual oeuvres a it is for larger trends
and the significance of Han’s work in its own right extends far beyond
its classification as anti-Obscure. Similarly, while the late 1980s high
point of the cult of poetry in the work of Haizi was in part a rejec-
tion of colloquializing and vulgarizing trends in the work of authors
including Han Dong, Yu Jian and the Macho Men, the poetic voice in
Haizi’s work presents something new, rather than a simple return to
pre-colloquial and pre-vulgar days. Subtle, intensely personal aspects
of his poetry have been drowned out by his mythification as a martyr
of poetry after his suicide in March 1989 (Three). Later that year, June
Fourth spurred the development of an exile poetry scene involving au-
thors such as Yang Lian, Wang Jiaxin and Bei Dao (Four), whose art
it catalysed rather than fundamentally changing it. June Fourth also
catalysed poetic practice by poets inside China, including Xi Chuan,
for whom the year 1989 was a turning point in a personal sense as
well. From the early 1990s onward Xi Chuan’s poetry becomes truly
innovative through the quality of creative indeterminacy, visible in in-
teraction of the text’s surface and its “deep meaning,” among other
things (Five). The sheer length of two early 1990s milestone texts of
the Elevated and Earthly aesthetics, by Xi Chuan and Yu Jian, in-
vites a comparison of the work of these two most prominent voices of
the avant-garde and some reflection on generic definitions of poetry
and prose (Six). Another rewarding angle on Yu Jian’s poetry lies in
its central feature of objectification, briefly introduced above. This is,
paradoxically, a highly sub-jective process, to do with form as well as
content (Seven). Likewise, the mutual reinforcement of form and con-
tent is essential to Sun Wenbo’s poetry of the mid- and late 1990s, with
poetic rhythm as a co-constituent of its narrative character (Eight).
Written in 2000-2001, right after the Popular-Intellectual Polemic, the
work of Yin Lichuan and Shen Haobo shows that Lower Body poetry
is intimately linked to rapid, radical social change and concomitant
generation gaps, but that there is more to it than meets the socio-
documentary eye (Nine).
Chinese poets are remarkably active as contributors to metatext. In
this respect, too, Xi Chuan has fascinating writings to his name, for
one thing because his work exemplifies the fuzziness of the boundaries
between text and metatext (Ten). Han Dong’s and Yu Jian’s abun-
dant explicit poetics (Eleven), on the other hand, contain much more
commentary on the actualities of the poetry scene, even though their