The development of Tang poetry can be divided into four periods: early Tang, prosperous Tang, middle Tang and late Tang.
Among the poets in the early Tang Dynasty, Chen Ziang and others were original. He emphasized the ideological nature of poetry, and his masterpiece is Youzhou Tower. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, poetry had a new development, and talented people came forth in large numbers. Wang Wei is famous for his beautiful landscapes and pastoral poems. At this time, the greatest poet with the highest poetic achievement was Li Bai. Compared with Du Fu, Li Bai's poems are bold, fresh and elegant, rich in imagination and light in language, so people call them "poetic immortals". Du Fu's poems reflect the complicated and turbulent historical era from prosperity to decline in the Tang Dynasty. Later generations called his poems "the history of poetry" and called him "the sage of poetry".
In the middle Tang Dynasty, there was a wave of reform in the poetry circle. Some poets, represented by Bai Juyi, advocate that poetry should reflect real life more and achieve educational purposes.
In the late Tang Dynasty, state affairs declined day by day, which was an eventful autumn. Li Shangyin and Du Mu are double walls in the literary world at this time, and their poems express their feelings of worrying about the country and the people.