SOURCE: “On Li Po,” in Perspectives on the T’ang, edited by Arthur Wright and Denis Twitchett, Yale University Press, 1973, pp.367-403.

In the following essay, Eide discusses three neglected poems by Li Po—“My Trip in a Dream to the Lady of Heaven Mountain,” “Lu Mountain Song,” and “Song of the Heavenly Horse”—and comments on aspects of these poems, including techniques used and facts expressed, that other critics have overlooked.

Although Sinology is a field crowded with men and issues still untouched by the hand of modern scholarship, even Sinologists are often astonished to discover how little work has been done on the T’ang poet Li Po. He and his contemporary, Tu Fu, are so closely associated, now so universally famous, that one tends to assume that these two, at least, have surely been “done” adequately for the present time. Yet...