Readers have long noted the copious references to drinking in Tao’s poems: the first known editor of Tao’s works, Xiao Tong (501-531), wrote that “there are those who have doubts about Tao Yuanming’s poetry, since wine is present in each poem.” Xiao then opined that “I, however, think that his true intentions do not lie in wine; rather, he made his mark through wine.”
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啸傲东轩下
聊复得此生I whistle complacently from the eastern veranda,
Somehow having found my life again.—Wendy Swartz, “Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: Landscape and Farmstead Poems,” in How To Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, ed. Zong-Qi Cai
