Mention Tang dynasty guti shi (ancient-style poetry), and you will quickly hear
about what it is not. That is, it is not jinti shi (recent-style poetry); in fact, the
genre as such came into being only alongside the development of the “recent,”
or “regulated,” style. When writing an ancient-style poem, poets (especially in
the genre’s early days) meticulously avoided the use of any devices—tonal regula-
tion, prescribed rhyme patterns, central parallel couplets, and the eight-line poem
length—that might belie the influence of what they saw as the superficial and
ornamental aesthetic that had begun animating the poetic world two centuries
earlier. But, despite the avowed hopes of some of its earliest composers, ancient-
style poems are not simply continuations of the poetry of long ago. Unlike the
general term “ancient poetry,” or gushi, which makes explicit the historical divide
stretching between the new reader and the old work, the term guti shi expresses
the desire to bridge (or, in some cases, to close) that divide—to write a poem today
as though it were written yesterday.
It is now somewhat difficult to imagine that the great poets of the Tang could
be nostalgic for the literary writings of times past. Yet, for many of the poets work-
ing in this style, the eschewal of the trappings of regulation—whether in indi-
vidual poems or in their oeuvre as a whole—reflected their adherence to a particu-
lar poetic ethos that they deemed to be on the decline: one that valued authentic
expression over performance, directness over elusiveness, and substance over de-
sign. Perhaps no one has described this aesthetic more succinctly and evocatively
than the poet Chen Zi’ang (661–702) when he compared certain admired poems
written in this style to the “music of metal and stone.”
Poets writing in the ancient style were, in essence, searching for a “purer”
mode of expression, one untainted by ornamental flourishes. The poetry they
eventually developed shares certain general characteristics: a vigorous, free-
flowing rhythm; direct language; and flexibility in prosodic design and use of
poetic devices. As we shall see in the following poems, however, the details
of poetic “ancientness,” in practice, varied greatly among individual poets and
evolved over time. Some, like Chen Zi’ang, chose a lapidary, prosaic style—one
that truly rings with the stark, primordial resonance of metal and stone—often
relying on allusion and Daoist terminology to convey his lofty yet passionate
concerns about corruption and man’s blindness to the reality of the Dao. On the
opposite end of the spectrum, and writing during the period when the regulated
style was at its apogee, Li Bai (701–762) reveled in the apparent freedom from
❀ 11 ❀
Ancient-Style Shi Poetry
Continuation and Changes