Tang poetry is divided into two categories: ancient poetry and modern poetry. The difference between these two categories is the difference in genre. That is to say, modern poetry pays great attention to rhythm, especially rhythm and contrast, while ancient poetry does not pay much attention to rhythm, and it does not require rhythm and contrast. (Of course, this is a very rough statement.)
Modern poetry began to sprout in the Qi and Liang Dynasties and was formally formed in the early Tang Dynasty. Its characteristics are:
(1) The number of words is fixed. Modern poetry includes regular verses and quatrains. Each regular verse has eight lines and each quatrain has four lines. The number of lines is limited. There are also "trimeter poems", but they are rare. There is also the so-called "rhyme arrangement", the number of sentences can be more than eight sentences, and the maximum can be as many as one hundred and fifty sixty rhymes (more than three hundred sentences), but the number of sentences is always an even number. Each line of modern poetry is generally five or seven characters, and six characters are rare. Therefore, the fixed number of words can be said to be a unique feature of modern poetry.
(2) Use rhyme strictly. This means: a poem must rhyme to the end, and rhymes cannot be changed in the middle; a poem must use words with the same rhyme, and no rhymes are allowed; generally, only plain rhymes are used.
(3) Pay attention to evenness.
(4) Pay attention to confrontation.
The two points (3) and (4) are the essential characteristics of modern poetry.
Ancient style poetry is relative to modern style poetry. As a genre, ancient poetry is characterized by a lack of emphasis on meter. All poetry always pays attention to some rhythm, such as rhyme, which is a kind of rhythm; the words and sentences are relatively neat (four, five or seven characters), which is also a kind of rhythm. These factors are all present in ancient poetry, so it cannot be said that ancient poetry does not pay attention to meter at all. However, the requirements for the rhythm of ancient poetry are not as strict as those of modern poetry. That is to say, the four requirements of modern poetry mentioned above in terms of word count, rhyme, rhythm, and counterpoint are not met by ancient poetry. In other words, the differences between ancient poetry and modern poetry are:
(1) There is no limit to the number of words and sentences, it can be four, five, seven, or miscellaneous; it can be at least two sentences, such as Fu Xuan's "Miscellaneous Words" can reach up to more than 300 sentences, such as "Ancient Poetry Written by Jiao Zhongqing's Wife" with 357 sentences.
(2) The rhyme is not strict. You can change the rhyme, you can rhyme through, you can use flat rhyme, or you can use oblique rhyme.
(3) Don’t talk about mediocrity.
(4) Do not talk about confrontation.
Ancient poetry is also called ancient poetry. As a genre, poetry before the emergence of modern poetry, including the Book of Songs, Songs of Chu, Han Yuefu, and five- and seven-character poems of the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, can all be called ancient poetry or ancient poetry. After the emergence of modern poetry in the Tang Dynasty, poets in the Tang Dynasty not only wrote modern poetry, but also continued to write poetry that did not pay much attention to rhythm, including four-character, five-character, seven-character, Yuefu, etc., which can also be called ancient-style poetry. However, according to custom, "Yuefu" is often classified as a separate category, and the rest are called ancient poems, especially five-character and seven-character poems, which are ancient poems in a narrow sense.