He tended to concentrate on esoteric religious and literary works rather than the Confucian Classics, although he certainly read and was familiar with the latter. The precocious Li Po started his poetic compositions early in childhood but was bored by formal education. When he was about five, his father, a businessman, and his mother, a washerwoman, successfully petitioned the authorities for permission to move to the city of Chang Ming in Szechwan Province, a more industrialized and cosmopolitan community. Precocious Youth Li Po was most likely born in central Asia, where his ancestors had lived in exile since the early seventh century.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context Few readers of Chinese literature have been able to resist his charm. Li Po is one of the great figures of Chinese literature, a poet whose adventurous life is mirrored in his verses. His writings reflect the grandeur of the Tang dynasty at the height of its prosperity. Li Po, one of the most popular Chinese poets, was noted for his romantic songs on wine, women, and nature. By reflecting the ambiguity and density of the original, Hinton continues to create compelling English poems that alter our conception of Chinese poetry.The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet (1922) Overview David Hinton’s translation of Li Po’s poems is no less an achievement than his critically acclaimed The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, also published by New Directions. Legendary friends in eighth-century T’ang China, Li Po and Tu Fu are traditionally celebrated as the two greatest poets in the Chinese canon. He wrote 1200 years ago, half a world away, but in his poems we see our world transformed. However ethereal in spirit, his poems remain grounded in the everyday experience we all share. There is a set-phrase in Chinese referring to the phenomenon of Li Po: “Winds of the immortals, bones of the Tao.” He moved through this world with an unearthly freedom from attachment, and at the same time belonged profoundly to the earth and its process of change.

His work is suffused with Taoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, but these seem not so much spiritual influences as the inborn form of his life.

“Li Po (A.D., 701-762) lived in T’ang Dynasty China, but his influence has spanned the centuries: the pure lyricism of his poems has awed readers in China and Japan for over a millennium, and through Ezra Pound’s translations, Li Po became central to the modernist revolution in the West.

The Selected Poems of Li Po by Li Po