Contributor
Li Bai
“Something Said, Waking Drunk on a Spring Day.” Li declined to take the civil-service examination and, after a period of secluding himself in the mountains, left Sichuan province in his midtwenties, wandering through the Yangtze River valley, where he met the woman who became his first wife. He later became friends with Du Fu, considered the other great poet of the Tang dynasty. Li was known for his love of drink: one popular legend holds that he drowned, when, drunk one evening in a boat, he tried to grasp the moon’s reflection.
