As for the various types of poetry, the issues are quite complex. The editor of "Three Hundred Tang Poems" divided poems into three categories: ancient poetry, rhythmic poetry, and quatrains, and each of these three categories has a category of Yuefu; ancient poetry, rhythmic poetry, and quatrains are each divided into five or seven characters. This is a division. The classification of "Tang Poems" compiled by Shen Deqian is slightly different: he does not separate Yuefu, but adds a category of five-character long rhymes. The collection of Du Fu's poems compiled by Guo Zhida of the Song Dynasty is simply divided into two categories: ancient poetry and modern poetry. Now we try to discuss the above three classifications with reference to other classification methods. From the perspective of rhythm, poetry can be divided into ancient poetry and modern poetry. Ancient style poetry is also called ancient poetry or ancient style poetry; modern style poetry is also called modern style poetry. Judging from the number of words, there are four-character poems, five-character poems, seven-character poems, and the rare six-character poems. After the Tang Dynasty, four-character poems became rare, so poetry collections were generally divided into five-character and seven-character poems.
The difference between ancient and modern styles. Ancient poetry is written according to the ancient poetry style. In the eyes of the Tang people, everything from the Book of Songs to Geng Xin in the Northern and Southern Dynasties is considered ancient. Therefore, there is no certain standard for imitating ancient poetic styles. However, the ancient poems written by poets have one thing in common, that is, they are not bound by the rhythm of modern poems. We can say that any poetry that is not bound by the rhythm of modern poetry is ancient poetry.
Yuefu originated in the Han Dynasty and was originally set to music, so it is called "Yuefu" or "Yuefu Poetry". This kind of Yuefu poetry is called "qu", "ci", "song", "xing", etc. After the Tang Dynasty, literati imitated this poetry style and wrote ancient poetry, also called "Yuefu", but they were no longer set to music. As new music gradually formed during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, lyrics to accompany the new music were later produced, called "ci". Ci probably originated in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. In the transitional period after the decline of Yuefu and before the emergence of lyrics, the lyrics accompanying new music adopted modern poetry. For example, Wang Wei's "Weicheng Song" and Li Bai's "Qingping Diao" are all in the form of modern poetry.
Modern poetry is represented by rhythmic poetry. There are many things to pay attention to in the rhyme, rhythm, and counterpoint of rhymed poetry. Because the meter is very strict, it is called rhymed poetry. Rhymed poetry has the following four characteristics:
1. Each song is limited to eight lines, five lines = forty words, seven lines = fifty-six words;
2. Rhyme with flat tone;
3. The balance of each sentence is regulated;
4. Each article must have a confrontation, and the location of the confrontation is also specified.
There is a kind of rhythmic poetry with more than eight lines, which is called long rhythm. The long rhymes are naturally modern poetry. Long rhymes are usually five-character, and the rhyme number is often indicated on the title. For example, Du Fu's "Thirty-Six Rhymes on the Pillow in the Wind-Speed ??Boat" is 360 words; That’s a thousand words. Except for the last couplet (or the first and last two couplets), this kind of long rhyme uses antithesis, so it is also called row rhyme.
The number of words in a quatrain is half that of a verse. Five-character quatrains have only twenty characters, and seven-character quatrains have only twenty-eight characters. Quatrains can actually be divided into two categories: ancient quatrains and regular quatrains.
You can use oblique rhyme in ancient times. Even if it rhymes with flat rhymes, it is not bound by the rules of flat rhymes in modern poetry. This can be classified into the category of ancient poetry.
The rhyme not only rhymes with flat tones, but also follows the flat and oblique rules of modern poetry. In form they are equal to half a verse. This can be classified as modern poetry.
To sum up: Generally speaking, the so-called ancient style belongs to ancient style poetry, while rhythmic poetry (including long rhymes) belongs to modern style poetry. Some Yuefu and quatrains belong to the ancient style, and some belong to the modern style.
Five characters are one sentence with five characters, and seven characters are one sentence with seven characters. Five-character ancient poems are referred to as Wugu, seven-character ancient poems are referred to as Qigu; five-character rhymed poems are referred to as Wulu, and seven-character rhymed poems are referred to as Qilv; five-character quatrains are referred to as Wujue, and seven-character quatrains are referred to as Qijue.
Ancient styles are divided into five ancient styles and seven ancient styles. This is just a rough division. In fact, in addition to the five-character and seven-character parts, there are also so-called miscellaneous words. Miscellaneous words refer to long and short sentences mixed together, mainly three-character sentences, five-character sentences, and seven-character sentences. Occasionally, there are also four-character sentences, six-character sentences, and sentences with more than seven characters. Miscellaneous poems generally do not have a separate category, but are only classified into Qigu. There are even no seven-character sentences in the article. As long as they are long or short sentences, they are classified as Qigu. This is a customary classification and has no theoretical basis.