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Mei Yaochen
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song dynasty poets
   
1002 births
   
1060 deaths
   
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Mei Yaochen passed the ''jinshi'' exam in 1051 and had a career in the Civil Service , but was unsuccessful. He was a prolific poet, with around 3000 works extant; he was popularized as a poet by the younger Ouyang Xiu .

Most of his works are in the '' Shi '' form, but they are much freer in content than those of the Tang Dynasty . His response to the impossibility of surpassing the Tang poets was to make a virtue of his lack of ambition; his ideal was 平淡 (pingdan), or the pedestrian. His early verses are often sociocritical, advocating reform along Neo-Confucian lines; later he turned to celebrations of ordinary life and verses mourning the deaths of his first wife and several of his children.