Selected Poems of Po Chü-i by Bai Juyi
Published 846 · 38,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Poetry, Classic Literature
How hard is Selected Poems of Po Chü-i to read?
Selected Poems of Po Chü-i scores 48 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Bai Juyi chose ordinary words on principle; the difficulty comes from Tang offices, place names and official ranks rather than diction.
- Sentence structure: 46 out of 100
- Clear declarative lines, mostly in ballad forms with straightforward sequence, and less grammatical omission than regulated verse.
- Abstraction: 44 out of 100
- Concrete situations — a cart of charcoal, a boat, a palace — with the political argument stated rather than hidden.
- Information density: 56 out of 100
- The satirical poems assume knowledge of specific Tang policies and scandals, which the notes have to supply.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- The poems say what they mean and often append a moral, though the best of them let the ending do the work.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The half-length of red silk and the lute on the night river carry the whole argument, but Bai Juyi generally prefers statement to figure.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- The satires work by flat juxtaposition — what a thing costs the poor against what it buys at court — and the tone stays deadpan.
- Resolution withholding: 46 out of 100
- Most poems close their case, though the Song of Everlasting Sorrow ends with the emperor still unable to reach the dead woman.
- Structural complexity: 44 out of 100
- Independent poems ranging from four-line lyrics to long narrative ballads, with the ordering supplied by the translator.
How Selected Poems of Po Chü-i is regarded
Selected Poems of Po Chü-i holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.