The main style of Liu Shenxu's poems is light and ethereal, which is a typical artistic pursuit in many of his poems. For example, Ke Ti: "On a road that stretches to the white clouds, by a spring that stretches to the bluest river. Petals falling from time to time drift with the tide, and the fragrance in the water floats far away. In the quiet city of Jingmen, facing the winding mountain road, there is firewood and copper for reading in the depths of Liu Yin. Through the hazy noon, sifted on my sleeve, the essence of the sun. " The title of this poem was lost in the process of circulation, so it was called "lost title". According to scholars' research, the title of this poem should be "Returning to Taoyuan Township", which is a poet's work describing his seclusion in Taoyuan, Jing 'an, Jiangxi. In China's classical aesthetics and poetry creation, the pursuit of "lightness" has a profound philosophical and aesthetic origin. Among them, the pursuit of "Qing" can be traced back to the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi in the pre-Qin period. Laozi advocated "purity and inaction", while Zhuangzi advocated "quiet and indifferent". At the same time, it also has the meaning of "innocent thoughts" advocated by Confucianism. In addition, China native Taoism has the concept of respecting purity, and foreign Buddhism also advocates "Prajna purity". It can be seen that the emergence of "Qing" is diversified, and the meaning of the early "Qing" is also relatively broad and vague. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, it was very common to use Qing to judge characters or essays on poetry, such as Li Bai's "I am Xiaoyaxie who grew up by your side" (Xuanzhou Villa sent off the minister), "Clear water gives the lotus" (after the chaos, Tian En Liu Yelang recalled the past and gave Jiang a good slaughter), and Du Fu's "Fresh in opening the house, Jun Yibao joined the army" (Li Bai returned in spring). Often used to refer to a smooth new style. "Dan", as an extension and concretization of "emotion", often appears together with "emotion", which refers to a language and lyric way with rich scenery and weak emotion in poetry. This "light" aesthetic pursuit has been embodied in the pastoral poems of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Among them, Meng Haoran's poems have become typical representatives of "light" beauty, such as the famous Sleeping in Jiande and boating in the West Field.
Many of Liu Shenxu's poems embody a kind of "light" beauty. He is good at writing relaxed scenery and expressing relaxed feelings in relaxed language. Poets don't directly describe colorful scenery with strong colors, but first take aesthetic photos with "light" aesthetic consciousness, and then write "light" on the premise of showing "light" aesthetic effect. In this way, the scenery that is "rich" has become "light" in the poet's pen. In poetry, "all scenery words are sentimental words", the scenery in the poem is "light", the feelings it expresses will also become "light", and the scenery will also become "light", thus forming the "light" style of writing landscape poems. For example, the scenery of sunset glow should be a rich picture of golden light scattering and colorful clouds all over the sky, but in Liu Shenxu's works, it is "Lin Hai at dusk, the sky is blue" ("Seeing Meng Haoran on the Yangtze River in late autumn") and "Looking at my hometown at dusk, clouds and waves pass through the bridal chamber" ("Jiangnan Qu"). These two sentences do not directly describe the splendor and color of the sunset. The former sentence focuses on the desolate scene of using the sky and the sea after sunset, and the latter sentence focuses on the clouds connected with water on the lake at sunset, so that the sunset presents a "light" scene. In the face of colorful natural scenery, the scenery that poets choose to write in their poems is often to give up beauty for lightness, which is very distinctive in the history of poetry. Another example is the description of beautiful women, which was often seen in the previous generation. However, in his poems, it has become a faint style: "The jade hand wants to give something, and it belongs to the bright moon" ("Jiangnan Qu"), "The lonely shadow is in the ice mirror, and the cold light shines on the jade face" ("Snow is a hill"). The poet depicts beauty with a faint color of jade; In the previous sentence, the accessories of beauty only mentioned the simple and elegant "double moon", while in the latter sentence, the words "loneliness", "ice" and "cold" were used, which rendered a Leng Xue background for beauty, which was extremely light. In the historical category of China's traditional aesthetics, "ethereal" also has a deep origin. "Emptiness" can also be traced back to the pre-Qin period. Laozi's "Good voice, invisible elephant" (Tao Te Ching) is a kind of beauty of emptiness, which has a great influence on the development history of ancient China literary theory. "Empty" means an implicit, profound and romantic meaning. With the rise of Zen Buddhism, "emptiness" has become a hot topic for scholars to talk about Zen Buddhism. After it was introduced into poetry, calligraphy and painting, it had a far-reaching impact on the development of China's artistic creation and aesthetic thought, and thus formed a Zen aesthetic thought criterion with "emptiness" as the artistic conception. On the one hand, the artistic conception of "ethereal" refers to the illusory, lofty and elegant nature of artistic style and image, on the other hand, it refers to its aura, spirituality and subtle purport, feelings and intentions. Wang Wei, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, likes to create a kind of empty inspiration in his landscape pastoral poems, such as "After the rain, the mountains are empty, and the autumn colors stand at dusk" ("Mountain in Autumn Evening"), "People are idle with osmanthus fragrance, and the mountains are empty and the night is quiet in spring" ("Birds singing in the stream"), which often gives people an ethereal, mysterious, quiet, leisurely and beautiful aesthetic experience.
Liu Shenxu often embodies the pursuit of "ethereal" realm in his poems. For example, his "Looking for the East Stream to Return to the Lake": "Looking back from the mountain, the sunset stream is deep. In the new place of Dongling, there are several apes named Konglin. It's my first trip, but I'm still alone on this road. Youxingfang is the past and back to the present. Yunfeng works hard, and the lake becomes a distant heart. Looking at the distance, sitting on the boat and playing the piano. " This poem describes the experience of climbing the mountain to enjoy the East Stream until dusk and walking back to the boat along the mountain road. The images such as "Qingxi", "Empty Forest", "Lonely Search" and "Wandering" are similar to the ethereal and beautiful Zen rhyme in Wang Wei's poems. Another example is the phrase "Petals come with the wind, and distant water comes" in "Queti", which stirs in the silence and stirs in the depths of the plain. It shows the slight noise of nature that the poet feels when he looks at the silent photos. He writes quietness by moving, seeks quietness in the hustle and bustle, transcends images to poetic heart, and shows the emptiness of his mood. Liu Shenxu's landscape poetry creation, from the way of looking at things to the emotional style, has the cultural implication influenced by Zen thought, full of Zen meaning and interest.
In a word, Liu Shenxu is one of the representatives of the pastoral school in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. His poetic style is light and ethereal, which is similar to Meng Haoran and Wang Wei. Many of his poems are of high artistic level. At that time, he was a poet with extensive friends and active creation. Together with Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, Pei Di, Chu Guangxi, Chang Jian, Zhang Zirong and others, he formed an idyllic group in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.