Writers › Writer / Poet
Wei Yingwu
Mid-Tang landscape poet and Prefect of Suzhou whose limpid verse ranks him with Wang Wei, Meng Haoran and Liu Zongyuan.
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Wei Suzhou · Wei Jiangzhou · Wei Zuosi
Wei Yingwu, a native of Chang'an, served Emperor Xuanzong as a palace guard in his youth before turning to study, and later governed Chuzhou, Jiangzhou and Suzhou, earning the name 'Wei of Suzhou'. His landscape and pastoral poetry is plain in diction yet lofty in mood, and later critics grouped him with Wang Wei, Meng Haoran and Liu Zongyuan. 'West Stream at Chuzhou', with its unmanned ferry boat drifting crosswise, is among his best-known poems.
Life and times
Dates c. 737 CE–c. 792 CE