His last work, Poetic Talk (which evolved from a proper name to a literary style, later called Poetic Talk on June 1), is the first poetic talk in the history of China literature. Ouyang Xiu's poetry criticism has changed the previous practice of focusing on Lu's comments, important examples, practices or techniques. Instead, it is eclectic and strives for perfection, and comments on poetry in a casual and friendly way, which has become a new form of poetry criticism.
In Preface to Mei Poetry, he put forward the argument that poetry is "poor before writing", developed the poetry theories of Du Fu and Bai Juyi, pointed out the direction for the development of Song poetry, and had a great influence on poetry creation at that time and later generations.