Vol. 5 · No. 1
Su Shi and Mount LuJames Hargett
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Abstract
The well-known writer and statesman Su Shi (or Su Dongpo, 1037–1101) spent a good portion of his career as a government official moving from one bureaucratic appointment to another. Su is never the 'outside observer' reporting on what he sees. His poems have multiple perspectives, which are always changing. They thus have no fixed meaning and are open to multiple interpretations. This is precisely why his landscape poetry is so spontaneous, vigorous and often transcendent in perspective.