The reading method of ancient poetry is gǔshī.
Archaic poetry is a poetry genre. Judging from the word count of poems, there are so-called four-character poems, five-character poems, seven-character poems and miscellaneous poems. Four words are one sentence with four characters, five words are one sentence with five words, and seven words are one sentence with seven words. After the Tang Dynasty, it was called modern poetry, so it was usually divided into two categories: five-character and seven-character poetry. Five-character ancient poems are referred to as Wugu; seven-character ancient poems are referred to as Qigu, and those using both three, five, and seven characters are generally considered Qigu.
Characteristics:
Archaic poetry is a poetry style relative to modern poetry. Before the formation of modern poetry, various Han poetry genres existed. Also known as ancient poetry and ancient style, it has three carriers: "song", "line" and "yin". Four-character poetry no longer exists in modern poetry. Although the word "ancient" is not added, it goes without saying that it is an ancient poetry. The ancient poems collected in The Book of Songs are mainly four-character poems.
There were still people writing four-character poems in the Han, Wei, and Jin Dynasties. Cao Cao's "Guan Cang Sea" and Tao Yuanming's "Standing Clouds" are typical examples of four-character poems. There are many ancient poems in five characters and seven characters, which are referred to as Wu Gu and Qi Gu. The Five Ancients first emerged in the Han Dynasty. "Nineteen Ancient Poems" are all five-character ancient poems. After the Han Dynasty, many people wrote five-character ancient poems. Most of the poems written in the Southern and Northern Dynasties were in five-character style, and there were also more five-character poems in the ancient poetry of the Tang Dynasty and after.
The emergence of the Seven Ancients may be earlier than the Five Ancients. But before the Tang Dynasty, it was not as common as the Five Ancients. In the Tang Dynasty, Qi Gu appeared in large numbers, and people in the Tang Dynasty also called Qi Gu a long sentence. Miscellaneous poetry is also unique to ancient poetry. Poems vary in length, ranging from one character to more than a cross, and are generally a mixture of three, four, five, and seven characters, with seven characters being the mainstay, so they are customarily classified into the seven-character category. There are many miscellaneous poems in the Book of Songs and Han Yuefu folk songs.
Since the Han and Wei dynasties, Yuefu poems have been combined with music, including songs, lines, tunes, words, etc. There are many Yuefu poems in the Tang Dynasty that are not enjoyable. There are various forms of miscellaneous poems in the Tang and Song Dynasties: some are composed of seven characters mixed with five characters, such as Li Bai's "The Road Is Difficult"; some are composed of seven characters mixed with three characters, such as Zhang Lei's "The Shepherd"; Some of them are mixed with three or five words, such as Li Bai's "Jiangjinjiu"; some are mixed with two, three, four, five or more than ten words among seven words.
For example, Du Fu's "Song of Thatched Cottage Broken by the Autumn Wind"; some are mainly composed of four, six, or eight characters mixed with five or seven characters, such as "The Road to Shu is Difficult" by Li Bai. In addition, ancient quatrains also had authors in the Tang Dynasty; they all belong to the scope of ancient poetry. In the process of development, ancient style poetry has an interactive relationship with modern style poetry. In the late Southern and Northern Dynasties, new style poetry appeared that focused on rhythm and antithesis, but had not yet formed a complete meter, and was somewhere between ancient style and modern style.
Some ancient poems in the Tang Dynasty had a rhythmic tendency, and even modern-style sentences were often incorporated into ancient-style works. However, there are also some ancient poetry authors who consciously distinguish themselves from modern styles, often using oblique sentences and occasionally prose to avoid rhythm.