Tao Yuanming

Tao Yuanming (365–427), also known as Tao Qian or T'ao Ch'ien, was a Chinese poet who lived in the middle of the Six Dynasties period (c. 220 - 589 CE). By any name, Tao is often regarded as the greatest poet during the centuries of Six dynasties poetry between the Han and Tang dynasties. He is also the foremost of the "recluse" poets, or the poets who seem to have written their greatest work while in reclusion (but not necessarily seclusion, as if in solitary confinement), and away from the hustle and bustle of official business and high society, and in whose poems the theme of countryside solitude particularly resonates. In Tao's case he is particularly regarded as a Fields and Gardens poetry poet: that is a nature poet, but a poet of the more domestic sort of nature, such as, famously, the chrysanthemums which grew along the east hedge of his place, as opposed to the poets who found their inspiration from nature somewhere out in the rugged and remote regions of vast and untamed wilderness.