Li Shangyin was one of the few poets who deliberately pursued the beauty of poetry in the late Tang Dynasty and even the whole Tang Dynasty. He is good at poetry writing, and parallel prose also has high literary value. His poems are novel in conception and beautiful in style, especially some love poems and untitled poems are touching, beautiful and moving, and are widely read. However, some poems (represented by Jinse) are obscure and inseparable, and there is a saying that "poets always love Quincy and hate that no one writes about Jian Zheng". In the second year of Tang Wenzong (837), Li Shangyin became the first scholar, and served as secretary of the provincial school, bookkeeper of the school and commander of Hongnong. Because he was involved in the political whirlpool of "the dispute between Niu and Li", he was excluded and frustrated all his life. In the last years of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (about 858), Li Shangyin died of illness in Zhengzhou and was buried in Xingyang, his hometown. It is also said that he was buried at the foot of Qinghua North Mountain in the east of Yongdian, Huaizhou.
There are about 600 poems handed down by Li Shangyin, among which the themes of current politics are directly touched, accounting for a considerable proportion. Li Shangyin's epic has made great achievements. Untitled poetry is Li Shangyin's unique creation.
As an intellectual who cares about politics, Li Shangyin wrote a lot of poems about history, and about 100 poems have been handed down. Among them, Bai Yun in the Western Suburb, Shi Dong Sui and Two Feelings are more important works. Naturally, a person's feelings and opinions are contained in vivid images, which are rich in lyrical colors and profound emotional charm, realizing the harmonious unity of the profundity of implication and the vividness of image and the fuzziness of meaning, and enhancing the artistic expression of object-chanting poems.
Li Shangyin's career was bumpy all his life, and his ambition in his heart could not be realized, so he used poetry to relieve his depression and anxiety. Ding An Tie Tower, In Spring, Happy Garden and Du Gongbu in the Middle of Shu are the most popular songs. It is worth noting that many seven-character poems in this kind of works are considered as important successors of Du Fu's poetic style.
Li Shangyin is most famous for his untitled love poems, but his untitled poems are "obscure" and have hidden meanings. These untitled love poems include 15 untitled poems and nearly 30 quasi-untitled poems. The works that chant inner feelings, including most untitled poems, are the most distinctive parts of Li Shangyin's poems, and they are also the most concerned parts of later generations. Jinse, Poems of Yantai Mountain, Three Poems by Bi Cheng, Return to the Temple of Our Lady, etc. , has always maintained a style similar to untitled poetry. Five Willow Branches, Sending Friends to the North on a Rainy Night, Mourning for the Past and Going East, Three Passes of Snow, etc. It embodies the artistic conception of another style of Li Shangyin's emotional poems.