YUEH-FU

Pinyin yuefu form of Chinese poetry derived from the folk-ballad tradition. The yeh-fu takes its name from the Yeh Fu (Music Bureau), created in 120 BC by Emperor Wu-ti for the purpose of collecting songs and their musical scores for ceremonial occasions at court. The music for these songs was later lost, but the words remained, forming a collection of Han dynasty (206 BCAD 220) folk poetry that served as the basis of the yeh-fu form. These poems were significant because they consisted of lines of varying lengths, with some having a regular form of five words per line rather than the then-standard four-word line. The yeh-fu thus broke ground for the later classic five-word-line poem. Many later writers, including the great Li Po (701762) and Po Ch-i (772846), continued to create poems derived from the yeh-fu tradition.