Bai Juyi

Song of Everlasting Sorrow is Bai Juyi's long narrative poem about Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei. It turns a Tang court romance and political disaster into a plainspoken story of love, loss, and dynastic collapse.

Bai Juyi, born in 772, became famous for writing poems in direct language rather than dense courtly style. His social poems often describe taxes, war, official corruption, and ordinary people's suffering.

Bai Juyi served as a Tang dynasty government official as well as a poet. That official life shaped many poems where he criticizes policy and writes about the cost of empire on common people.

Song of Everlasting Sorrow is the obvious starting point because it is one of his best-known long poems. A second major work is The Song of the Pipa, another narrative poem tied to exile, performance, and memory.