author
Yisun Wang
A master of the late Southern Song lyric tradition, Wang Yisun turned images of cicadas, flowers, moonlight, and fading seasons into deeply layered reflections on loss and change. His elegant, often haunting poems helped make him one of the era’s most distinctive writers of ci poetry.
1 Audiobook
花外集
by Yisun Wang
About the author
Wang Yisun was a Chinese ci poet from Kuaiji, in present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang. His courtesy name was Shengyu, and he was also known by the literary names Bishan and Zhongxian. His life dates are uncertain, but he is generally placed around 1230–1291, during the transition from the Southern Song to the Yuan dynasty.
He served as an educational official in Qingyuan Circuit, near present-day Ningbo, and moved in literary circles with poets including Zhou Mi, Zhang Yan, and Jiang Jie. His surviving work includes more than 60 ci poems, collected in Bishan Yuefu, also known as Hua Wai Ji.
Wang is especially admired for his object-centered poems, which use subjects such as the cicada, new moon, flowers, and autumn leaves to suggest grief, political upheaval, and the passing of dynasties. His restrained language, intricate structure, and sorrowful emotional undercurrent earned him a place among the “Four Great Masters of the Late Song Ci Tradition.”