Style is smooth and natural, fresh and relaxed, or rigid and tough. Their works thus laid the basic characteristics of the Song Dynasty and greatly influenced the subsequent development direction. With the efforts of Ouyang Xiu and others, Song poetry entered its first prosperous period in Zongshen period. During this period, poets came forth in large numbers with various schools, represented by Wang Anshi, Su Shi and Huang Tingjian. Influenced by Ouyang Xiu, they all pay more attention to ideological content, and have the habit of taking writing as poetry or taking discussion as poetry to varying degrees. Wang Anshi's poems are rich in content, distinctive in personality and strong in political color. In his later years, he emphasized strict poetic techniques and encouraged Song people to learn from Du Fu. Su Shi's poems, however, are brilliant and unrestrained, shaped with things and diverse in style. In addition, poets such as Huang Tingjian, Qin Guan, and Chao also have their own characteristics. The development of Song poetry to Su Shi has completed a change in poetic style since the late Tang Dynasty and Kunxi, making Song poetry a new world besides Tang poetry. Huang Tingjian, on the other hand, made an in-depth exploration of the expressive forms and creative skills of poetry in this new world, and created the most influential and far-reaching poetry school in the Song Dynasty-Jiangxi Poetry School. After the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty, in the face of the decline of the national movement and the disadvantages exposed by the popularity of Jiangxi poetry school, some writers began to jump out of the fence of Jiangxi poetry school and set up their own homes, and achieved considerable success. Among them, the appearance of four famous poets in the Southern Song Dynasty (You Mao, Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda and Lu You) marked the second prosperous period of poetry in the Song Dynasty. The poet who can be unique in this issue is Jiang Kui. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Four Spirits School and the Jianghu School, starting from Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, completely abandoned the tradition and turned to Jia Dao, Yao He and others, either writing about landscapes and pastoral areas and not talking about the world; Or write about the life and feelings of literati. Make the poetic style change again. However, the achievements of these two schools are not high, and Song poetry tends to decline during this period. It was not until the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty that the gloomy and tragic patriotic poems of Wen Tianxiang, Wang Yuanliang and Xie Ao added the last glory to the Song Dynasty.
Contemporary poetry has developed and made progress in ideological content and artistic expression. Compared with Tang poetry, Song poetry has expanded in reflecting the sufferings of people's livelihood, exposing the darkness of society and expressing the internal struggle of the ruling class. Especially in the context of extremely sharp and fierce ethnic contradictions, the patriotism in poetry is more intense and profound. In terms of artistic style, Song poetry has gradually developed into thinking, revealing and meticulous, with the characteristics of discussing more, writing more poems and learning more poems. Generally speaking, the poets in Song Dynasty attached great importance to learning from the Tang Dynasty, some poets emphasized imitation, and more poets tried to innovate in learning, forming a pattern of seeking novelty and change. Therefore, there are many schools of Song poetry, which often develop and evolve, and the poetic styles are also rich and diverse, and excellent poets and works are constantly emerging. There are a large number of Song poems, and the number of authors far exceeds that of Tang Dynasty.