During our phone conversation in places precisely 12 hours apart, Wang Dan's light, fast, northern-accented Chinese is at first very relaxed. But when the subject of his writing comes up, such gravitas enters his tone that-as with his poetry and essays themselves-it is impossible to lighten up the mood no matter what approach you take. Even though the 1989 Chinese democracy movement took place 15 years ago, in his writings over these 15 long years Wang Dan has not in fact moved forward, but has become increasingly marginalized, moving ever farther backward, like a man "frozen in time."

In contrast to many exiles living in a new land who lose touch with their roots and their mother tongue, Wang Dan is in exactly the opposite situation. The open US media provides him with a steady and diversified supply of information about his homeland, while the concern and affection with which he is treated by people from Taiwan and Hong Kong offer him broad opportunities for self-expression. Therefore, besides political and cultural commentary, Wang Dan is able to also undertake poetry and essay writing, and it is in the field of creative writing that he shows the "blue" side of his life. And what we read is indeed moody and dark.

The two books published simultaneously at the beginning of this year-As Clear as the Deepest Night and Ever More Aware of Being a Stranger Here-bring together work Wang did from 1995 to 2002, when he was in prison, was released and left China (in 1998) to study in the US, and thereafter traveled frequently between the US and Taiwan. The poems have a coherent and uniform style, but vary in length. The essays, on the other hand, are more like anecdotes, being only a few paragraphs long and mainly on sentimental topics; this is the result of the space limits of the Hong Kong newspapers in which they were originally published. The title of the collection of essays, Ever More Aware of Being a Stranger Here, comes from a passage in the poem "Returning Home," and the content precisely fits this line of poetry.

Perhaps we can get an even better sense of Wang's literary embrace by beginning with a discussion of the poems that he considers to be his most important.

Nostalgia is one of the most uniform and integral threads running through Wang's writings. His life changed dramatically in 1989, and he spent the better part of his 20s in prison. The pitiless sequence of life means that it is impossible to recover lost time or make up for things missed, so that events of the past become like ghosts that continually haunt one, and it takes a great deal of writing to face up to and finally exorcise them.

Youth is long gone, but are the ideals of youth also a thing of the past? The young poet Ching Hsiang-hai describes Wang Dan in this way: "Like most people who have been subjected to drastic change, the world is changing in a way they cannot accept, forcing them in a panic to go back and debate and justify the beliefs and outcomes of days gone by." Adds Ching Hsiang-hai: "Poetry is wide-open to everyone, especially for people like Wang Dan who have lived unsettled lives."

But in his poetry the unsettled Wang Dan leaps into an enormous peacefulness beyond the boundaries of routine experience, and becomes not in the least unsettled. Each of his poems, which he has been producing in a steady stream, is about the unrecoverable lost youth that is now embedded in history. Not only is there one uniform theme, but the quietness of the language used is also quite consistent. Except for a sense of immaturity that comes from different nuances of language in writings from different periods, there is no significant change in mood or theme over the eight years covered. Even if one were to rearrange the works thematically, unless one were to read very closely indeed, it would be impossible to discern anything that seemed out of place chronologically. The result of the tranquil, chronologically obscure nature of the poems is that it would be more accurate to say not that Wang is attempting a dialogue between history and poetry, but that he is engaged in a conversation with himself within poetry and history. Thus proverb- or slogan-like expressions often appear in his poems, as exemplified by the piece "Steeled by Absence of Desire": "But when time piles up / and slowly crushes glass-like emotions to shards / we learn to be steeled by absence of desire / This makes us feel a sense of loss / and gives a sense of thinking back on / something that we have read."

If another poet were to use extended writings to clarify his or her place in politics or history, he or she would inevitably run a high risk of looking at life from a macroscopic perspective, exaggerating the impact of the age upon the micro-individual and also exaggerating the significance of the individual in history. But Wang's unique background and continuing exile status seem to give him this privilege. At the same time, this approach also addresses the "voyeuristic" desires of readers.

In terms of literary value, Wang Dan's essays do not come up to the same level as his poetry. But for the ordinary reader, in contrast to the more obscure poems the essays seem to offer a more accessible point of entry for understanding the soul of the exile. This is despite the fact that it is quite obvious that Wang carefully works to preserve his private space. Indeed, he says that while he quite understands the perspective of the public, in his literary works he deliberately obscures the most private aspects, and does not show his genuine face to readers.

Wang Dan's identity gives his creative writing a free pass to the public, and even more to the mainstream media. But at the same time this also is a problem for him. It makes it unnecessary for him to pursue perfection in his literary life, and his obscure and emotional essay style readily reveals a literary technique that is not yet mature, and indeed a character that is equally childlike. For most readers, there is still greater significance in reading this body of work because of Wang's status rather than the literary value of the work itself.

Of course it is impossible to use an absolute dialectal approach to understand the work of famous writers, because a writer's identity and the literary importance of his or her work are inextricably intertwined. But literature is above all a manifesto of the individual, and a form of self-expression. Wang is not, like many other celebrities, just trying to play off of his name recognition, but wants to let people see him as an individual. The writer Chang Hui-ching describes Wang's attitude toward life as follows: "Perhaps we readers in Taiwan will feel a sense of familiarity when we read his work, because it seems so reminiscent of the work of intellectuals in the May 4 Movement [1919]. But discourses about the role intellectuals should be playing have fallen by the wayside, and are doomed to become a kind of nostalgia that no longer fits the times." She also says: "Before plunging into the world, he plunges into himself."

With the passage of time and events, Wang Dan's partners from those early days have fallen into anonymity or obscurity, and Taiwan's process of democratization has reached a point at which pure dissidents have receded into the background. What readers see and feel in the works of Wang Dan is perhaps a sense of loss for one's own youth and conscience. Wang once wrote: "We in the democracy movement generation have more memories than any other generation. We had no time to enjoy growing up, but 'historical memory' is engraved on our lives."

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Titles: As Clear as the Deepest Night (poems) and Ever More Aware of Being a Stranger Here (essays)Author: Wang DanPublisher: Locus PublishingPublication date: January, 2003Price: NT$200 and NT$220, respectively

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Readers remain intrigued by the life and writings of Wang Dan, one of the few leaders of the 1989 democracy movement in China who is still involved in political activity. (courtesy of Locus Publishing)

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Living the life of an exile unable to return to his homeland, Wang Dan finds his most basic psychological connection with home through the written word. (courtesy of Locus Publishing)