Mei was born in a peasant family, so although his poems are well written, they have never attracted the attention of others. Later, with the help of my uncle's shadow, it became the main book of Yuzhou, and Xijing was appreciated by the money left behind in Luoyang. Money makes friends with him and sings with him to help him improve his reputation. Soon, Ouyang Xiu also arrived in Luoyang. He hit it off with Mei and began to advocate poetry innovation.
Mei suffered repeated failures, and her career was very unsatisfactory, so she devoted all her energy to poetry creation and became one of the few famous poets in the early Song Dynasty. He cared about the sufferings of the people and wrote many poems reflecting their lives. In the first year of Renzong Kangding (1040), Zhixiang County. At that time, the imperial court was fighting Xixia, and the manpower and material resources were insufficient, which increased the taxes and corvees on the people. Mei witnessed the sufferings of the people and angrily wrote poems such as Tian.
Mei is not only good at writing classical poems such as Tian, but also can write modern metrical poems freely. "Travel Notes of Lushan Mountain" describes the scenery where the mountain passes. The language is almost understated and full of fun: "Serving the wild, Qian Shan is high and low. Along the way, the mountain range in front of me is constantly changing, and a person is immersed in the winding and deep wild road, but forgets where to go. The sun rises, the snow melts, the mountains look more silent and empty, the silly bear is slowly climbing the tree, and the deer is leisurely sipping the stream. I can't see any buildings or smoke, so I can't help wondering if there are people living in the mountains. There are chickens outside the cloud. " His famous sayings include "Wild birds (fú) have leisure when sleeping on the shore, and old trees have flowers without ugly branches" (Dongxi), "Flowers are light in the court, and wild butterflies return during the day" (Leisure) and so on.
Mei's poems are simple and plain, and "plain" is his artistic pursuit. The so-called blandness is not mediocrity and vulgarity. He once said to others, "a good poem should be written in a new way, and something that has not been written before." It is the best poem to be able to write a difficult scene exactly like the one in front of you, and make people feel that there is something behind the words in the poem after reading it. " Mei has a clear artistic pursuit, and keeps working hard in this direction, and finally reaches an unremarkable realm. Ouyang Xiu was the leader of the literary world at that time, but he claimed that his poems were not as good as Mei's. Someone got a southwest minority costume embroidered with Mei's poems. From these two things, it can be seen that the title of Mei's poem is very high.