Wú Wén 吳雯 (1644–1704), zì Tiānzhāng 天章, hào Liányáng 蓮洋 (“Lotus-Ocean”), born in Liáoyáng 遼陽 (Liaodong, Manchu border-region). CBDB id 62941; lifedates firm.
In Shùnzhì 6 (1649) — Wú then five suì — his father Wú Yǔnshēng 吳允升 was appointed xuézhèng (Education Commissioner) of Púzhōu 蒲州 (Shānxī, modern Yǒngjì 永濟); the father died in office shortly thereafter. The orphaned Wú brothers, too poor to return to Liaodong, were resettled at Púzhōu, and Wú Wén accordingly became a Púzhōu local. In Kāngxī 18 (1679, jǐwèi) he was recommended to the Bóxué hóngcí 博學鴻詞 special examination but failed to be selected.
Known throughout his life for two contrasts: extreme poetic accomplishment and equally extreme social ungainliness. 趙執信 Zhào Zhíxìn’s Huáijiù shī preface records of him: “He was awkward at examination-essays, frustrated in the examination hall; physically coarse and homely; his clothes and cap dirty and tattered; sometimes for a whole year he did not wash or bathe — everyone laughed at him. Yet his poetic talent was uniquely transcendent.” 王士禛 Wáng Shìzhēn became Wú’s most prominent patron-critic: on first reading Wú’s poetry — including the lines quán rào Hàn cí wài, xuě míng Qín shù gēn; nóng yún shī Xīlǐng, chūn ní zhān tiáo sāng; zhì jīn Yáofēng shàng, yóu jiàn Yáo shí rì — Wáng was unable to stop reciting them. Wáng’s Jū yì lù extensively praises Wú’s Xīchéng biéshù (Western-City Country Cottage) poems.
Wú’s poetry was first printed at Wúzhōng (Sūzhōu); second printing at the capital; third at Tiānmén (Tianjin). After Wú’s death Wáng Shìzhēn collated and abridged the corpus to about 1,000 poems; this is described in Wáng’s mortuary inscription. The collection that the WYG-Sìkù preserves is the Liányáng shī chāo 蓮洋詩鈔 (KR4f0033) — a 10-juan refined recension prepared by Sūn È 孫諤 of Shānxī, prefect concurrent of Púzhōu, in Qiánlóng jiǎshēn (29, 1764), drawing on Wáng Shìzhēn’s original abridgment manuscript recovered from Wú’s nephew Wú Dūnhòu 吳敦厚.
Wú’s poetic affinities are largely with Yuán Hàowèn 元好問 — both Liáoyáng/Liáojīng natives, both yímín-ish in mode — though, as the Sìkù tíyào notes, Wú slips into excessive fándiǎn (Buddhist-scripture allusion) in his less successful pieces.