They were very talented poets in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. The four gifted scholars became famous early, and gained the reputation of "four outstanding writers" in their youth.
In the history of Tang poetry, they are pioneers who dare to reform the poetic style of Qi and Liang Dynasties. Tang Taizong likes palace poems, and his poems are mostly romantic, with obvious traces of Qi Liang's palace poems. Shangshuling Shangguan Yi also inherited the legacy of Sui Chen, and his works were all the rage, and scholars rushed to follow suit, which was called "Shangguan Style" in the world.
When Qi Liang's formalistic poetic style was still dominant in the poetic world, the "Four Masters" stepped forward. Wang Bo first stood up against this unhealthy trend in the early Tang Dynasty, and then the other three also stood up in response and joined in the creative activities against "Shangguan Style".
They tried to break through the cage of the legacy of Qi and Liang Dynasties and the "official style", and moved poetry from a narrow court to a vast market, from a narrow pavilion to a vast border of mountains and rivers, which opened up the theme of poetry, enriched the content of poetry, endowed poetry with new vitality, improved the ideological significance of poetry at that time, showed a new poetic style, and promoted the development of poetry in the early Tang Dynasty towards a healthy road. Generally speaking, the contribution of the four outstanding poets to the development of Tang poetry is mainly manifested in the following two aspects:
First of all, it is manifested in the theme and content of the works, including poems describing history and things, as well as landscape poems, such as Wang Bo's Wang Tengge. Or express the feelings of parting, such as Wang Bo's "Send Du Shaofu Shu Biography", which is a famous article that has been told through the ages; And Luo's "Yu Yishui gives away". Some people praise recruiting people to be stationed in remote areas, some describe recruiting husbands and thinking about women, and some express sympathy for unfortunate women. All four people are talented and have low status, which makes them closer to social reality, so poetry is often used to expose some social phenomena.