Ci
Quick answer: Ci is a Chinese lyric form written to fixed tune patterns, with lines of uneven length. Learn how ci works, its Song dynasty masters and what it teaches.
Ci is a Chinese poetic form in which words are written to fit existing musical tune patterns, giving poems with lines of deliberately uneven length. Each tune, called a cipai, dictates the number of lines, the length of every line, the rhymes and the tonal contours. The poet composes new words into this ready-made shape, the way an English songwriter might set fresh lyrics to a familiar melody.
The form rose with the entertainment quarters of the late Tang and reached its glory in the Song dynasty, when it became the natural vehicle for love, wine, memory and exile. Because the tunes came from popular music, ci carried an intimate, sung quality that the older shi tradition, with its even lines, rarely allowed. Poets found they could whisper in ci.
How It Works
The tune pattern is a template of syllable counts and tones. Hundreds of cipai exist, each with an evocative name such as 'Butterflies Lingering over Flowers', and a poet announces the template in the title even though the original melodies are mostly lost. The uneven lines create a rhythm of surge and hesitation.
An invented fragment mimicking the shape in English: 'Rain again. / The lamp burns low in the river house, / and the geese have taken the last of autumn south. / Who folds your letters now?' Short line, long breath, long breath, short question: that tidal movement is the signature of ci.
Where You Will See It
The Song dynasty is the golden age. Su Shi widened the form from love song to philosophy and landscape; Li Qingzhao, the most celebrated woman poet in Chinese history, made ci the instrument of grief and remembrance after war destroyed her settled life; the former emperor Li Yu, writing after losing his kingdom, turned it toward devastating personal lament. Anthologies of Song ci sit beside Tang shi as the twin peaks of classical Chinese lyric.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Working in English, you can borrow the central discipline: write to a fixed template of line lengths that you did not design for the poem in hand. Take a song you love, count the syllables of its lines, and compose entirely new words into that skeleton. The friction between your sentences and the inherited shape produces phrasing you would never find in free verse. Writory's monthly contest scores structure alongside creativity, and a well-handled borrowed template shows both at once.
What poets can take from this
- Steal a structure: map a song's line lengths and fill them with new words.
- Let short lines interrupt long ones; unevenness is the form's music.
- Suit the subject to the shape, intimate and emotional rather than public.
- Read Li Qingzhao in translation to hear what the form does with grief.
- Reuse the same template for several poems, as ci poets reused tunes.
Try it yourself
Choose a song whose melody you know by heart. Write down the syllable count of each line of one verse and chorus, then write a poem about a memory of water that fits those counts exactly.
Questions
What is the difference between ci and shi?
Shi uses lines of equal length, usually five or seven characters, while ci follows tune patterns that fix uneven line lengths, rhymes and tones. Shi was the classical mainstream; ci began as popular song and grew into high art.
Are ci still sung?
The original melodies are almost entirely lost, so classical ci survive as texts read for their verbal music. Modern composers have set famous ci to new tunes, and some are widely known as songs in China today.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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