While at Jiangling, Yuan wrote many poems, and his style and Bai's were both popular and referred by the populace as "Yuanhe Style" () — "Yuanhe" being Emperor Xianzong's era name. The eunuch monitor of Jingnan Circuit (荊南, headquartered at Jiangling), Cui Tanjun (), was impressed by Yuan's talents and did not treat him as a subordinate, but rather with great respect; he also often collected Yuan's poems and recited them. Meanwhile, sometime thereafter, Yuan was made the military advisor to the prefect of Tong Prefecture (通州, in modern Nantong, Jiangsu), while Bai was made the military governor of Jiang Prefecture (江州, in modern Nanchang, Jiangxi). Despite the distance between the two, they often wrote poems to each other, which often ran 30 to 50 lines, sometimes up to 100 lines. The people of the Yangtze River region became impressed by their poems and often read and studied them. Many of Yuan's poems showed his sadness at being exiled from the capital.