Before the Tang Dynasty, the ancient poetry style was a style that did not pay attention to rules and regulations, nor did it limit the number of words and sentences. After the Tang Dynasty, due to the emergence of modern style poetry, in order to distinguish ancient style poetry from new metrical poetry, poets deliberately imitated the writing style of ancient poetry in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties and limited it in some aspects, thus forming a fixed mode of ancient style poetry in the Tang Dynasty. The result is to change the completely free style of poetry before Tang Dynasty into a semi-free poem between metrical poetry and free poetry.

There were many poets in Tang Dynasty. Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi are certainly world-famous great poets. Besides them, there are countless other poets, like stars all over the sky. Today, more than 2,300 of these poets are well-known. There are also more than 48,900 of their works preserved in the Complete Tang Poems. The themes of Tang poetry are very extensive. Some reflected the class situation and class contradictions of the society at that time from the side, revealing the darkness of feudal society. Some praised the just war and expressed patriotic thoughts. Some depict the beauty and charm of the rivers and mountains of the motherland. In addition, there are also people who express their personal aspirations and experiences, people who express their children's love, people who tell friends' friendship, people's joys and sorrows, and so on. In short, from natural phenomena, political trends, working life, social customs, and even personal feelings, they cannot escape the poet's keen eyes and become the subject matter of their writing. In terms of creative methods, there are both realistic schools and romantic schools, and many great works are models of the combination of these two creative methods, forming the excellent tradition of Chinese classical poetry.

There are many forms of Tang poetry. There are basically two kinds of ancient poems in Tang Dynasty: five words and seven words. There are also two kinds of modern poetry, one is called quatrain and the other is called rhymed poetry. Quatrains and rhymed poems are different from each other in five and seven words. Therefore, there are basically six basic forms of Tang poetry: five-character ancient poems, seven-character ancient poems, five-character quatrains, seven-character quatrains, five-character rhymed poems and seven-character rhymed poems. Ancient poems have relatively wide requirements for rhyme and metre: in a poem, the number of sentences can be more or less, the chapters can be long or short, and the rhymes can be changed. Modern poetry has strict requirements on rhyme and meter: the number of sentences in a poem is limited, i.e. Four quatrains and eight rhymes. The level and oblique tones of the words used in each poem have certain rules, and the rhymes cannot be changed. Rhythmic poems also require the middle four sentences to be antithesis. The style of ancient poetry is handed down from the previous generation, so it is also called antique. Modern style poetry has neat rules, so some people also call it metrical poetry.

The form and style of Tang poetry are rich and colorful, bringing forth the new from the old. It not only inherited the tradition of Han and Wei folk songs and Yuefu, but also greatly developed the style of singing style. It not only inherited the five-and seven-character ancient poems of the previous generation, but also developed into a long and huge system of narration and romance. It not only expanded the use of five-character and seven-character forms, but also created modern poems with especially beautiful and neat styles. Modern style poetry was a new style poetry at that time. Its creation and maturity were an important event in the history of poetry development in Tang Dynasty. It pushes the artistic features of harmonious syllables and refined words of ancient Chinese poetry to an unprecedented height and finds a most typical form for ancient lyric poetry, which is still especially popular with the people. However, the regular poetry in modern style poetry, due to its strict rules and regulations, is easy to restrict the content of the poem and cannot be freely created and brought into play. This is a great defect brought by its advantages.