Delving into some ancient Chinese poetry Out of personal interest I asked a friend here about analysing, reading and reciting some (ancient) Chinese poems. I was pointed in the direction of some Tang poetry, so I thought I might share a few results of my follow-up searching. The simple poem I started with was by Wang Wei, 王维 an eighth century poet, artist, musician and official - all round a very accomplished man. I see his poetry influenced Gustav Mahler in 'Das Lied von der Erde' and Ezra Pound in his 'Ideogrammic method' - the simple images of this poetry 'allowed poetry to deal with abstract content through concrete images' Wang Wei used a form of poetry called jueju 绝句. This form comprises a single quatrain of two couplets, each of the four lines being 5 characters (wujue 五絕) or 7 characters (qijue 七絕） A quote from Wiki: Wang Wei was a "very great master" of the jueju many of his quatrains depict quiet scenes of water and mist, with few details and little human presence One of Wang Wei's famous poems is "One-hearted" ("Xiang Si"): 相思 - 王维 红豆生南国 春来发几枝。 愿君多采撷， 此物最相思。 Hóngdòu shēng nánguó, chūnlái fā jǐ zhī. Yuàn jūn duō cǎixié, cǐ wù zuì xiāngsī. When those red berries come in springtime, Flushing on your southland branches, Take home an armful, for my sake, As a symbol of our love. that's a pretty ho-hum translation. But a clear feature of the poems is the simplicity, clean uncluttered images of nature conveying feeling, emotion, or abstract concept. Below is a photo (1) drawing of Wang Wei, (2) HuaShan Sha'anxi province (3) a painting by Wang Wei He and DuFu 杜甫 were both caught up in the upheaval of the AnShi, AnLushan rebellion, near the end of their lives. Wang Wei was born in Shanxi, died in Sha'anxi