2. Poetry is the unity of inner beauty and outer beauty. When we appreciate a poem, we are used to feeling its inner beauty and outer beauty together. The facts are exactly the same. A good poem is indeed the unity of inner beauty and outer beauty. Without any aspect, a good poem cannot be formed. Due to the development of Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty, a rational philosophical poem appeared. Because the beauty of appearance is not fully displayed, these poems are rarely widely read. On the other hand, some poems in the Five Dynasties were flowery in rhetoric and empty in content, which were not appreciated by people, but were dismissed as "decadent voices". It is precisely because a good poem contains both internal beauty and external beauty, this comprehensive feeling easily confuses the difference between the two kinds of beauty, and often pays attention to the analysis of the content of the poem and ignores the discussion of the external appearance, which is a shortcoming in poetry appreciation.
3. The formal beauty of poetry includes content. Poems before the Tang Dynasty are called classical poems, and there are usually many sentences in classical poems. Tang poems are mostly metrical poems, which are called "modern poems" to distinguish them from ancient long poems. There are seven-character poems, five-character poems, seven-character quatrains and five-character quatrains.
Metric poems have neat shapes and regular rhythms. For example, the seven laws are four words, eight sentences and fifty-six sentences, and the seven laws are four sentences and twenty-eight sentences. They are all written in neat squares, and the antithesis and parallelism of words in sentences can give people beautiful visual enjoyment. Metric poetry is very rhythmic to read, and every sentence has two syllables. The number of words in the two syllables of the seven-character poem is four or three, and the proportion conforms to the golden section law of 0.6 18. The number of words in the two syllables of the five-character poem is two or three, which is also in line with the golden section number. In addition, the words in the poem pay attention to smooth rhyme, which can give people a beautiful hearing enjoyment.
Metric poems are particular about words and sentences. Words should rhyme, words should be neat, and sentences should have rules such as linking and turning. This stylized expression, together with neat appearance and regular rhythm, constitutes the basic elements of poetry appearance. According to these procedures, you can make a metrical poem. As the saying goes, you can recite 300 Tang poems by heart even if you can't write them. But following these procedures does not make a good poem. A good poem needs good content, but also clever ideas in the form of expression. The form of poetry, like other things, should be constantly developed and perfected, and cannot stop at the same level. It is in the form of poetry that Li Shangyin has developed and made outstanding achievements.