Yang Lian is one of the best-known of the so-called "misty" or "ambiguist" poets who came to prominence in the 1980s. He has published six collections of poetry and two anthologies of prose in Chinese. His work has been translated into many European languages, and English versions of his poems have been widely published in magazines. WellSweep has brought out a book-length collection of his shorter poems, Non-Person Singular (1994). A volume called Where the Sea Stands Still was the first complete publication of Yang Lian’s most recent work.