The Poet Li Po, A.d. 701-762

Arthur Waley brought Chinese poetry to the English-speaking world, and this 1919 biography remains a landmark. In an era when Western readers knew almost nothing of Tang Dynasty literature, Waley reconstructed the life of Li Po - the "immortal poet" who drank with the moon and wrote with the brush of a god. The book interweaves biography with translations of Li Po's most famous verses, showing how a scholar-official who failed at court became the voice of Chinese romanticism. Waley illuminates the eighth-century world that shaped Li Po: the imperial court at Chang-an, the mountains where he retreated, the wine houses where he made his legendary friendships. The book contrasts Li Po with his more solemn contemporary Tu Fu, positioning Li Po as the poet of escapism, nature, and drunken transcendence. Whether you come to it as a student of Chinese literature or a reader seeking the strange pleasure of meeting a mind from another millennium, Waley's study endures because it doesn't just explain Li Po - it makes you feel why Chinese poets called him divine.