objectification and the long-short line 279More important, however, is the rushed feeling that unpunctuated
text exudes. In poems that are punctuated by blanks, the absence of
conventional punctuation precludes the coming to a halt of the words
themselves, and hence their closure and reification; but the blanks
also function as moments that invite reflection. If unpunctuated text
is breathless, then blanks in a text without conventional punctuation
marks are places to hold one’s breath. They offer space for a literal
distancing from the words and, of course, suggest pauses in the reading
process, whether silent or aloud; but without conventional punctua-
tion’s effect of decelerating and terminating the words’ momentum,
such as in the falling intonation triggered by the anticipation of a full
stop. The reflection that can take place during the blanks is of a kind
that disallows or discourages the reader from interrupting the flow of
reading, from landing: it is unresolved and irresolvable.
Crucially, in its unwillingness to reify the words, the materiality of
the poem leads the reader to suspect that its surface is dissimulative in
nature, and that any defamiliarizing ignorance it may display—of hi-
erarchies of the lofty and the lowly, and conventions of social inter-
course, for instance—is feigned ignorance. The typical Yu Jian form,
then, challenges readers to mobilize their thinking and to open their
minds, just as these poems are open-minded or pseudo-naive vis-à-vis
the world as we know it, or think we do.
There are two final points that support this analysis. The first is that
the peculiar form of Yu Jian’s poetry has an appreciable effect on its
reciters, both the poet himself and others who read his work aloud,
such as students in the classroom and those who read translations of
his work at literary events outside China. In my experience, its reciters
immediately identify the blanks as requiring special recitative treat-
ment, and tend to sustain an “unnatural,” more or less level pitch that
rarely descends to a “natural,” sentence-final low. As a result, their
recitation comes across as questioning and searching, and resisting the
intonational urge toward conventional pitch patterns—and, toward
conventional perception and interpretation in the broad rhetorical
realm. This reinforces the mechanism of objectification, both as de-
fined at the start of section 1 and as a particular type of irony.
Secondly, our examination of what I have called the most typical
Yu Jian form brings to mind a remarkable moment in «File 0» that was
flagged in chapter Six for its disruption of the poem’s overall rhythm.