A Poem of Changgan Analysis

Of course, this poem was originally written in Chinese, so we're dealing with a translation here. But hey, given that we can't speak Chinese (we wish we could), we'll talk about the translation tha...

We learn a whole lot about the speaker of this poem. This is partly because she starts off telling us about herself as a teeny-weeny little kid, and we watch her as she grows up and gets married. S...

There are two main settings in this poem: the setting of the house and the neighborhood that the speaker inhabits, waiting for her husband, and then there's the landscape that the speaker's husband...

Thanks to its free verse form (check out "Form and Meter" for more), this poem sounds very conversational—and we mean very. There's no regular meter, no rhyme, and, to top it all off, the speaker...

The most important thing about the title of this poem, "A Poem of Changgan," is "Changgan." What is it? It's an ancient capital city in north central China, so this title clues us into the fact tha...

Li Po may have been writing poetry over a thousand years ago, but this dude sure knows how to communicate in a direct way. He's known for a style of poetry that is clear, simple, and conversational...

This is a pretty straightforward poem about a wife missing her husband. Simple, right? Yes, it is, but the reason we didn't give it an even easier rating is because there are a couple of things tha...

Li Po is in fact known by several names, including Li Pai, Li Bo, and Qinglian Jushi. (Source.)Li Po took his own journey in life. He left his home in 725 to wander the Yangtze River Valley and wri...

Yes, this is a poem about a marriage, but no—there's no hanky-panky here. How could there be when the speaker of this poem, the bride, is so shy?

Changgan (or Ch'ang-kan) (title, l. 5): an ancient city in north-central China, which was the capital of the Tang Dynasty Gorges of Chu-t'ang (l. 16): gorges along the Yangtze river in China Chang-...