Writers › Writer / Poet
Cui Hao
High Tang poet from Bianzhou whose regulated verse on Yellow Crane Tower Yan Yu ranked first among all Tang poems of that form
Mural of Yellow Crane Tower, a work by this person.
At sunset over the Han River, the empty tower and drifting clouds recall the yellow crane of legend. Trees and distant islets lead the eye toward the poem’s lingering homesickness.
Also known as Bian Zhouren · Shang Shu Si Xun Yuan Wai Lang
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Cui Hao came from Bianzhou and, according to the Biographies of Tang Talents (Tang caizi zhuan), passed the metropolitan examination in 723. The Old Tang History (Jiu Tang shu) describes a gifted man of loose conduct who loved gambling and wine and who married only beautiful women, sending each away when she displeased him, several times over. Yin Fan's anthology Gems of the Rivers and Mountains (Heyue yingling ji) says his youthful verse was frivolous but that a stint on the frontier late in life gave it a hard edge and a full picture of army life. He rose to vice director in the Bureau of Merit Titles and died in 754. The Song critic Yan Yu, in Canglang's Remarks on Poetry (Canglang shihua), ranked his Yellow Crane Tower first among Tang regulated verses of seven-character lines. The story that Li Bai climbed the tower, read the poem and declined to write his own comes from the Biographies of Tang Talents and is anecdotal.
Life and times
Dates c. 704 CE–754 CE