This is a bad review

A continuous stream of clouds and mist has not such a manner as his; waters stretching far off into the distance have not such a mood as his; all spring's flowering glory has not his gentleness; autumn's bright purity has not his strictness of form; masts driven by the wind and horses in the battle line have not his daring; tile sarcophagi and tripods with seal-script have not his antiquity; the season's flowers and fair women have not his sensuality; walls run to weeds and ruined palaces and tomb mounds overgrown with brush have not his resentment and mournfulness; the leviathan's gaping maw and the leaping sea turtle, the bull demon and the snake god, have not his sense of fantasy and illusion.

So wrote Du Mu in his preface to Li He's collection of poetry. But he didn't actually like Li He's work...or, if he did, could not permit himself to praise it unreservedly, as was expected in such prefaces.

Li He died in 816 at the age of twenty-six, and had entrusted his bundled manuscript to his friend Shen Shushi, who toted it around with him for fifteen years, neglecting his duties as literary executor.  Du Hu was a young but promising writer employed by Shen Shushi's brother in Xuanzhou, and late one night, in the throes of drunken guilt over his neglect, Shen Shushi sent sent a messenger over to Du Hu's house to request that he write a preface for Li He's manuscript.

As the story is told, it was well after midnight when the messenger banged on Du Hu's door, and such things simply weren't done. So he refused. But Shen Shushi kept after him, motivated, perhaps, by the fear of his friend's unquiet ghost. Eventually Du Mu relented.

Within the context of this period of Tang poetry, one aesthetic norm was a kind of poetic gravity expressed by the subtle illumination of moral and political issues, achieving what we today might call "significance." By those standards, Li He's poetry was beautiful, but frivolous. Summarizing Du Mu's unusually critical preface, Stephen Owen writes, "...Li He's poetry depends on gorgeous diction and fresh ideas, only without the engagement in the social and political world that produced one kind of depth in a Tang context of values [...] In effect, Du Mu is saying that Li He's poetry rings hollow."

Du Mu held to accepted standards of "serious" poetry even as he was seduced by the fantasies of Li He, and he produced the fanciful passage above while writing what was, for the time, a rather harsh critique: "...he sought to capture the quality and manner of the moment, yet he departed so far from the usual paths of letters that one scarcely knows of them."

We should all be damned with such faint praise.

Li He, The Tomb of Little Su

  Dew on the hidden orchid,
  like crying eyes.
  Nothing ties a love knot,
  flowers in mist I cannot bear to cut.
  Grass like the carriage cushion,
  pines like the carriage roof,
  the wind is her skirt,
  the waters, her pendants.
  A carriage with oiled sides
  awaits in the evening.
  Cold azure candle
  struggles to give light.
  At the foot of West Mound
  wind blows the rain.