caption death_date death_place birth_place nationality birth_date period image article_title name occupation
'' k ` ai -lrb- 1140 -- 1210 -rrb- li bai in stroll '' , by liang 762 dangtu , china suiye -rrb- , tang empire -lrb- present-day suyab , kyrgyzstan chinese 701 tang dynasty libai.jpg li bai
 li bai poet
li bai

li bai -lrb- 701 -- 762 -rrb- , also known as li po , was a chinese poet acclaimed from his own day to the present as a genius and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights .
he and his friend du fu -lrb- 712 -- 770 -rrb- were the two most prominent figures in the flourishing of chinese poetry in the mid-tang dynasty that is often called the `` golden age of china '' .
around a thousand poems attributed to him are extant .
his poems have been collected into four tang dynasty poetry anthologies , and thirty-four of his poems are included in the anthology `` three hundred tang poems '' , which was first published in the 18th century .
in the same century , translations of his poems began to appear in europe .
the poems were models for celebrating the pleasures of friendship , the depth of nature , solitude , and the joys of drinking wine .
among the most famous are `` waking from drunkenness on a spring day '' , `` the hard road to shu '' , and `` quiet night thought '' , which still appear in school texts in china .
in the west , translations of li 's poems continue to be made into many languages .
his life has even taken on a legendary aspect , including tales of drunkenness , chivalry , and the well-known fable that li drowned when he reached from his boat to grasp the moon 's reflection in the river .
much of li 's life is reflected in his poetry : places which he visited , friends whom he saw off on journeys to distant locations perhaps never to meet again , his own dream-like imaginations embroidered with shamanic overtones , current events of which he had news of , descriptions sliced from nature in a timeless moment of poetry , and so on .
however , of particular general importance are the changes in the times through which he lived : his early poetry took place in the context of a `` golden age '' of internal peace and prosperity in the chinese empire of the tang dynasty , under the reign of an emperor who actively promoted and participated in the arts ; but this all changed suddenly and shockingly , as , beginning with the rebellion of the general an lushan , all of northern china was devastated by war and famine , in one of the greatest catastrophic losses of population in all history .
li 's poetry as well takes on new tones and qualities .
unlike his younger friend du fu , li was not to live to see the quelling of these disorders .
however , much of li 's poetry has survived , with enduring popularity in china and a developing influence in the western world .
