SOURCE: “Immediacy and Allusion in the Poetry of Li Bo,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 52, No. 1, June, 1992, pp. 225-61.

In the following essay, Varsano contends that Li Po's deliberate use and manipulation of traditional poetic conventions plays an important role in his success as the quintessentially “immediate” poet who seems to respond spontaneously to the world around him, apparently unconstrained by the dictates of tradition.

The ideal of spontaneous expression—poetic expression as the unmediated, untransformed verbal manifestation of emotion—has remained a constant in Chinese poetic discourse ever since its first declaration in the Great Preface of the Shijing: “Poetry is that to which intention goes. While in the heart, it is intention; set forth in words, it is poetry. One's feelings are moved within and then take form in words. When words do not suffice, one sighs; when sighing does not suffice...