168 chapter four
Jiaxin’s poetry. As noted in previous chapters, textual and metatex-
tual discourse contain thinly veiled signals of censorship surrounding
representations of June Fourth, and the cataclysm of change from the
1980s to the 1990s with June Fourth at its center. Ouyang Jianghe’s
essay “Writing Poetry inside China after ’89: Indigenous Disposition,
the Marks of Middle Age and Being an Intellectual” (89ৢݙ䆫℠
ݭ: ᴀೳ⇷䊾, Ёᑈ⡍ᖉ㟛ⶹ䄬ӑᄤ䑿ӑ, 1993) is a conspicu-
ous example. This illustrates that censorship is a face-saving exercise
among other things: we all know that we all know, but we just cannot
say that we do. In addition to Zang, other critics who comment on
exile and related issues in Wang Jiaxin’s work are Cheng Guangwei,
Chen Chao and Zhao Xun. Since Wang is less well known than Yang
Lian and Bei Dao, especially outside China, I will provide some back-
ground before turning to the exile factor in his poetry.^53
Without detracting from the avant-garde’s pluriformity, there are a
few crudely generalizable differences between Obscure Poetry on the
one hand and the work of many younger poets on the other, especially
those of Earthly inclination. One is that the rich, sometimes incom-
prehensible yet fascinating imagery found in the former—words that
flaunt their metaphoric potential—is absent from the latter. We have
seen, for instance, that the paucity of imagery in Han Dong is part
of a poetics of disbelief and demystification, with a self-styled aver-
sion to grand ontologies of poetry, and with much room for irony and
“trivial” realities of everyday life.
While Wang Jiaxin’s poetry displays little disbelief or irony, the
above generalization does apply. Some of his finest poems contain few
evident metaphors, if any. His overall presence on the poetry scene—
philosophically inclined, serious if not solemn, introverted yet ambi-
tious—displays kinship with authors such as the early Xi Chuan and
(^53) Zang 1994; cf Zhang Hong 2003: 63-106, 135-139. Ouyang 1993a; while this
first appeared in the new Today, it quickly entered domestic circulation through cop-
ies of the journal that made their way into China, and was frequently reprinted in
domestic publications, recent examples including Wang Jiaxin & Sun 2000: 181-200
and Chen Chao 2003: 165-185. Cheng Guangwei 1993, Chen Chao 1994, Zhao
Xun 2002. Two rich collections of Wang’s poetry are Wang Jiaxin 1997 and 2001.
English translations are found in Tang Chao & Robinson 1992, Zhao (Henry) &
Cayley 1994 (under the pen name Zi An) and Wang Ping 1999. Other commentaries
include Chen Chao 1989: 295-300, Zang 1994, Geng 1999, Xi Du 2000: 107-110
and Liu Shuyuan 2005: 209-213. A combined reprint of Chen Chao 1989 (295-300)
and 1994 is found in Chen Chao 1999: 515-531.