Sun Guangxian Study

This article focuses on a renowned poet from WuDai period, Song Guan Xian (year 896 AD?– 968 AD?), and provides a full discussion of his writing style. (WuDai period includes five dynasties– Post-Liang, Post-Tang, Post-Jin, Post-Han, and Post-Zhou, and it spans from year 907 AD to 960 AD.) (In this article, poetry means a writing style of poems with uneven lines.)Song's life was full of hardships, and even though he was ambitious, he was unable to accomplish goals. Due to his unique experience with life, it did not only render him a shrewd politician but also gave his poetry an atypical style that varied significantly from the traditional format—HuanJian style. During WuDai, a period that was dwarfed by the Great Tang Dynasty, the first collection of uneven-lined poems,"HuanJianJi", was completed rather quietly in West-Shu region. The completion of the collection was influenced various factors, including, tradition, historical and geographical outlay, and social temperament of the time. Because of multifarious exertions, HuaJian (translated: among flowers) style of poetry writing, inevitably became characterized by a flavor of love poems tinged with light flirtation. Song's poetry was not only branded by the HuaJian style from WuDai period but also influenced by folklore from an earlier time period, and his writing style became something of unique feature filled with freshness, ease, outspokenness, and vigor. Although the contents of his poems were somewhat confined by the HuaJian style, he sufficiently differentiated himself from other great poets of the same time period, such as Wen TingYun and Wei ZhuangXiang.