Poet Su Shi

Su Shi’s poetry includes shi verse and ci lyrics that join landscape, friendship, historical reflection, and the experience of changing fortune. In his Mid-Autumn lyric to the tune Shui Diao Ge Tou, the moon connects separation with a wish for shared well-being. His Red Cliff lyric gives landscape the scale of historical memory, while other poems turn towards rain, travel, food, and daily companionship. The range of subject matter helped extend the expressive possibilities of ci. His shifting tones allow sorrow and amusement, aspiration and acceptance, to coexist within a voice attentive to both public history and the immediate world.