Collected Poems
composition: secureauthorship: probable
A poet who never sat the examinations writes verse of apparently effortless motion, and becomes the figure against whom Chinese poetic spontaneity is permanently measured.
- freedom of form chosen against the prevailing regulated verse
- a constructed persona of the unbound wanderer
- plainness of diction concealing rapid syntactic control
- the standard against which spontaneity in Chinese poetry is judged
Around a thousand poems attributed to Li Bai survive, most in forms allowing more freedom than the strict regulated verse of his contemporaries. The recurring materials are wine, the moon, mountains, parting, and a persona of the unbound wanderer who declines office and outlasts dynasties. The apparent ease is technique: the diction is plain, the syntax rapid, and the transitions abrupt in ways that reward rereading. He served briefly at court, was expelled, and was later caught on the wrong side of the An Lushan rebellion.
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