The first stage: Early poetry creation was mainly influenced by previous poets such as Li Bai, Wang Bo and Du Fu, with the main purpose of expressing personal feelings and political ambitions.
The second stage: the poetry creation in the middle period is mainly characterized by an unconventional and bold style, which is characterized by freedom, boldness and boldness, and mostly focuses on describing nature and scenery.
The third stage: the poetry creation in the later period is mainly characterized by fresh and implicit style, focusing on expressing inner feelings and thinking, and expressing nature and life.
The most prominent feature of Yan Yu's poetry criticism is to introduce Zen thinking method into poetics and speak in Zen discourse, that is, "to use Zen as a metaphor for poetry." The characteristic of poetry is "interest", which can not be obtained by knowledge, but can be understood and mastered by "wonderful enlightenment".
"Wu Miao" was originally a Buddhist term, which was particularly emphasized by Zen. Refers to the understanding and knowledge of Buddhism, and Yan Yu uses Zen as a metaphor. He said, "Poetry is like Zen", "Zen is vivid and poetry is wonderful".
The connotation of "Wu Miao";
Yan Yu believes that for poets, wonderful understanding is above all else, because artists must understand the special laws of art and poets must understand the samadhi of poets, so he said, "Only understanding is the right way and the truth."
Poets should, of course, grasp the aesthetic characteristics of poetry as their main purpose and be good at mastering various artistic expression methods, so it is natural to regard wonderful enlightenment as "what should be done" and "true colors". It is unprecedented for Yan Yu to understand the particularity of poetry art as the most important condition for a poet to create, and to express and emphasize it so clearly in theory.