Poems play with sounds, words, and grammar. That makes poems difficult to write but very interesting to read. They use colours, feelings, experiences, and images to paint a picture in your mind. Let' s have a look at the following Chinese classical poem:
On the Stork Tower
By Wang Zhihuan
The sun along the mountain bows,
The Yellow River seawards flows,
You can enjoy a grander sight,
If you climb to a greater height,
Translated by Xu Yuanchong
In Chinese classical poems, the form is very important: the correct number of lines and the number of words in each line. Poems often follow special models of rhythm（节奏）and rhyme. However, modern poets begin to rejecttraditional forms and structures（结构）for poems in the 20th century. As a result, most poems today are written in free style, with lines of different lengths.
Today many Chinese people are becoming more interested in reading poems, no matter in what language they are written. Translations can be good, but being able to read in the original（最初的）language is best.
