Chinese poetry

Chinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi (詩), ci (詞) and qu (曲). There is also a kind of prose-poem散文 called fu (賦). During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style. All traditional forms of Chinese poetry are rhymed, but not all rhymed texts in ancient China are classified as poetry - for instance, lines from I Ching 易經 are often rhymed, but it is not considered poetry.

Early poetry

There could have been a number of important anthologies 詩集 of early poetry in ancient China, but since the burning of books by Qin Shihuang 秦始皇, the earliest extant anthologies are the Shi Jing and Chu Ci, dating to the Spring and Autumn Period 春秋時代 and the Warring States Period 戰國時代 , respectively.

Shi Jing (詩經 "Classic of Poetry") was the first major surviving collection of Chinese poems, collecting both aristocratic poems (Odes頌) and more rustic鄉土 poetry, probably derived from folksongs (Songs). They are mostly composed of four-character (四言) lines.

A second, more lyrical and romantic anthology was Chu Ci (楚辭 "Songs of Chu"), made up primarily of poems ascribed to Qu Yuan 屈原 and his follower Song Yu 宋玉. These poems are composed of lines of irregular lengths, in the style prevalent in the state of Chu.

Classical poetry

During the Han Dynasty漢代, the Chu Ci-type of lyrics evolved into fu 賦. During the Six Dynasties, fu remained a major poetic genre, and together with shi formed the twin generic pillars of Chinese poetry until shi began to dominate during the Tang dynasty唐.

From the Han Dynasty onwards, a process similar to the origins of Shi Jing produced the yue fu (樂府 "Music Bureau") poems. Many of them are composed of lines of five-character (五言) or seven-character (七言). These two forms of shi were to dominate Chinese poetry until the modern era. They are divided into the original gushi and jintishi. The latter is a stricter form developed in the early Tang dynasty with rules governing the structure of a poem. The greatest writers of gushi 古詩and jintishi 近體詩are often held to be Li Bai and Du Fu respectively.

Towards the end of the Tang dynasty, the ci lyric became more popular. Ci are literally new lyrics made up to fit to pre-existing tunes. Each of the tunes had music that was often lost, but retained a metre unique to the tune. Thus, each ci written is labelled "To the tune of [Tune Name]" (調寄[詞牌]), fits the metre and rhyme of the tune, and may or may not have been sung. Most closely associated with the Song Dynasty, ci most often expressed feelings of desire, often in an adopted persona, but the greatest exponents of the form (such as Li Houzhu and Su Shi) used it to address a wide range of topics.

As the ci gradually became more literary and artificial after Song times, Chinese Sanqu poetry (散曲), a freer form, based on new popular songs, developed.

After the Song Dynasty, both shi and ci continued to be composed until the end of the imperial period, and to a lesser extent to this day. However, for a number of reasons, these works have always been less highly regarded than those of the Tang dynasty in particular.

Later classical poetry

Firstly, Chinese literary culture remained in awe 敬畏 of its predecessors: in a self-fulfilling prophecy, writers and readers both expected that new works would not bear comparison with the earlier masters. Secondly, the most common response of these later poets to the tradition which they had inherited was to produce work which was ever more refined and allusive含典故的; the resulting poems tend to seem precious or just obscure to modern readers. Thirdly, the increase in population, expansion of literacy, wider dissemination of works through printing and more complete archiving vastly increased the volume of work to consider and made it difficult to identify and properly evaluate those good pieces which were produced. Finally the 1920s saw the rise of vernacular本地話,方言 literature, particularly opera and novels, which increasingly became the main means of cultural expression.

Modern poetry

Modern Chinese poems (新詩 "new poetry") usually do not follow any prescribed pattern. Poetry was revolutionized after the May Fourth Movement when writers try to use vernacular styles closer to what was being spoken (baihua 白話) rather than previously prescribed forms. Early 20th-century poets like Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 , Guo Moruo 郭沫若 and Wen Yiduo 闻一多 sought to break Chinese poetry from past conventions by adopting Western models; for example Xu consciously follows the style of the Romantic poets with end-rhymes.

In the post-revolutionary Communist era, poets like Ai Qing 艾青 used more liberal running lines and direct diction, which were vastly popular and widely imitated.

In the contemporary poetic scene, the most important and influential poets are in the group known as Misty Poets, who use oblique allusions and hermetic references. The most important Misty Poets include Shu Ting舒婷, Bei Dao北島, Gu Cheng顾城, Duo Duo多多, and Yang Lian杨炼, most of whom were exiled after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. A special case is the mystic poet Hai Zi海子, who became very famous after his suicide.

Modern Chinese poems (新詩 vers libre) usually do not follow any prescribed pattern. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer"), which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Xu Zhimo is a romantic poet who loved the poetry of the English Romantics like Keats and Shelley. He was one of the first Chinese writers to successfully naturalize Western romantic forms into modern Chinese poetry.