"But what made him a poet might have ruined him as a politician. He lived unconventionally—drinking wine into the night, wandering around after curfew, mingling with people from all walks of life."

"He was always deemed too free-spirited to be a safe candidate for office. Even Jin’s restrained tone can’t obscure Li's extravagant life, which saw the poet ping-pong between pawning clothes for cups of wine and having the Emperor serve him a ladle of soup. In times of disappointment, his faith kept him afloat. He wrote, 'Heaven begot a talent like me and must put me to good use / And a thousand cash in gold, squandered, will come again.' Sometimes his confidence seems close to egomaniacal: when a summons from the imperial court came, he gloated, 'laughing out aloud with my head thrown back, / I walk out the front gate. How can a man / Like myself stay in the weeds for too long?'"

From "Ha Jin’s Self-Revealing Study of the Chinese Poet Li Bai," a New Yorker review of "The Banished Immortal."