He Jingming (Ho Ching-ming) 1483-1521

A celebrated mid-Ming poet and one of the 'Early Seven Masters' group of fugu ('recovery of antiquity') reformists. He passed the jinshi examination when he was nineteen and spent most of the rest of his life in government service. Most of his surviving work is shi poetry, but he also wrote prose and rhymed prose. He was much praised by later critics both for the quality of his poetry and for his view on the imitation of ancient literary forms, which he saw as useful for the novice poet, but 'a raft to be abandoned once the shore was reached'.

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