Su Hui was a Fourth Century CE Chinese poet who lived during the chaotic “Sixteen Kingdoms” period of China’s past. Only one of her poems survives to modern times, but it’s a doozy. It’s commonly called “Star Gauge”. In a 2012 article in the poetry magazine Welling out of Silence, David Hinton, an American poet and scholar of Chinese poetry, describes it.
It’s an angry and heartbroken love poem. Su Hui’s husband, a government official, took a concubine when he was transferred to a post far away from home. Su Hui expressed her affection for her husband in this poem. When he read it, tradition holds, he dismissed his concubine and returned to his wife.
Because of the structure of the language, Chinese poems can be read in any direction, which led to the development of the genre of “reversible poems”. Su Hui helpfully embroidered the poem in five colors and multiple blocks, which add to the number of directions in which her poem can be read.
-via Amanda Brennan