In honor of this beautifully designed pamphlet, I have written a poem, inspired by Li Shangyin. It is titled

"Books that I will never even glance through again, but I am still glad have been made available to me"

Derangements of my Contemporaries, by Li Shangyin.

Aside from the glorious cover art and interesting essay by the translator, I doubt this will have much to offer anyone who is not themselves a poet, and I am not a poet. But the idea of writing poems that are just lists with suggestive titles is a good one, and I hope some poet takes it up to write about a world I understand a bit better than that of ninth century China. This is entirely my fault; if I manage to learn more about the world and the classical literature of the time, I might find this more amusing. But I somehow doubt it. The satire here is very mild:

Mildly Inappropriate

Unbecomingly, obsessively adorning oneself in the latest fashions
Discussing the classics or history with a vulgar person [that's me! I'm the vulgar person!]
Reciting poetry to a prostitute

and so on.

And my tastes have been formed by Swift. But for all that, I'm very glad this has been translated into English, I'm happy to own it, and don't care to slander the translator's good work by giving it a low star rating. This is a piece of history, and I owe Chloe Garcia Roberts great thanks for making it available to me.