Mo Fu (800–869 A.D.), a distant relative of Du Fu, though little known outside a coterie of intensely devoted followers during his lifetime, has recently drawn the attention of scholars working in the more obscure corners of Chinese poetry. A noted wag and raconteur, he is rumored to have once carried on simultaneous conversations with a dozen acolytes for five days straight, pausing only to drink copious amounts of plum wine. About this, his sole libation, he wrote: “I know not—does wine / fuel my pen, or do my words / cry out to be drowned?”