李洞

Li Dong was a poet of the Tang dynasty. His life is now difficult to reconstruct in detail, and available public sources are limited: neither the dates of his birth and death nor his native place or official career can be verified. Judging from his extant works, he was skilled in five- and seven-character regulated verse and quatrains, and his subjects often involve farewells, presentation poems and replies, and frontier or regional scenery. This collection contains four of his works, namely "Sending Vice Director Lu to Jinzhou," "Sending the Prefect of Liangzhou in Winter," "To the Venerable Sanhui," and "Seeing Someone Home to Visit Relatives in Hezhong," all classified as ancient poetry. These poems generally take parting and gift-exchange as their thread, depicting travel, regional sights and friendship, with concise diction and a clear, gentle tone that reflects something of late Tang and Five Dynasties poetic style. Because documentary evidence is insufficient, his family background, teachers and literary circle require further study; readers may consult his surviving poems together with later anthologies of Tang poetry and brief biographical notices of poets.