How to evaluate Cao Zhi?

In Wen Xin Diao Long, Liu Xie paid unprecedented attention and praise to Cao Zhi's poems. Liu Xie said that Cao Zhi could write both four-character poems and five-character poems, which affirmed Cao Zhi's ability. But Liu Xie himself doesn't like five-character poems very much. Xiao Tong attaches great importance to the five-character poems in Cao Zhi's Selected Works, because most of them are five-character poems, and only a few four-character poems are selected, and they are all works of Cao Zhi.

Liu Xie's evaluation of Cao Zhi's Yuefu poems is that "the story is well-tuned, which is commonly known as a good tune, but it is not", because Liu Xie advocates that poetry should be full of sound and emotion, and Cao Zhi is just to Liu Xie's taste. As we all know, most of Cao Zhi's poems are catchy and rhythmic, and Cao Zhi is good at refining words.

Zhong Rong, a contemporary of Xiao Tong, rated Cao Zhi as a poet with "immortal spirit". Li Bai and Du Fu, who shared this honor with Cao Zhi, praised Cao Zhi's poems for their extremely high backbone and Hua Mao.

As a literary figure, Cao Zhi is far more powerful than a political figure based on Wei and Jin Dynasties. Perhaps it was his failure in the political field that made Cao Zhi's literary achievements in his later period, because the style of Cao Zhi's later works changed greatly, and he completed his poetic form "Miscellaneous Poems" in his later period. His masterpiece "Ode to Luo Shen" pushed his literary influence to the peak, and many literary masterpieces in later generations quoted the words in "Ode to Luo Shen".