SOURCE: “Li Po,” in Chinese Lyricism, Columbia University Press, 1971, pp. 141-53.

In the following excerpt from his full-length study of Chinese lyric poetry, Watson discusses several examples of Li Po's work, classifying individual poems according to their traditional form and observing that the poetry is notable “less for the new elements it introduces than the skill with which it handles old ones.”

The first thing to note about Li Po's poetry, particularly in comparison to that of Tu Fu, is that it is essentially backward-looking, that it represents more a revival and fulfillment of past promises and glory than a foray into the future. In the matter of poetic form critics generally agree that Li Po introduced no significant innovations. He seems to have been content to take over and employ what his predecessors had left him, writing in all the ordinary verse forms of the...