Poetry

Much of his sanqu lyric poetry has survived, including 209 xiaoling lyrics and 11 taoshu suites. All were collected in the Complete Sanqu Poems. His collected works, Qiao Ji Ji, appeared in 1986. Qiao's lyrics combine literary language with the language of the street. One of his methods was referred to as the "six character prescription", which he explained as a lyric poem with a "phoenix head, pig's belly and a leopard tail". Qiao wrote that he had "wandered for forty years", travelling around many of the central and southern areas of China. In Looking for Plums, he described an episode of his wanders in the countryside, visiting villages during winter until he came across a village in a wooded mountain where a beautiful woman lived.

Social criticism is also a recurring theme in Qiao Ji's literary works. This often manifested in his poetry, where he constructed imaginary worlds so that they could be rejected. For instance, in the poem On Myself, the poetic persona enjoying his retirement from service described being included in a bureaucracy only to reject its manifestations such as the civil service examination system. Experts compare Qiao Ji's style with the work of Zhang Kejiu, in terms of its elegance and lucidity as well as the style and the use of pleasing sounds. The poem Sky-Clear Sand involved the combination of topic and comment construction, while his contemporaries wrote their poetry in a structure that began with a topic and followed with the comment.

作品風格

處元社會，出仕不易，作品多流露對現狀的不滿。題材以寄情山水、聲色詩酒、客居異鄉、貧困生活為主。名作有《【越調】天淨沙·即事》。

自評

【正宮】綠么遍

「不佔龍頭選，不入名賢傳。時時酒聖，處處詩禪，煙霞狀元，江湖醉仙，笑談便是編修院。留連，批風抹月四十年。」

著作

• 專集：《文湖州集詞》、《喬夢符小令》、《夢符散曲》

• 雜劇：《揚州夢》、《兩世姻緣》和《金錢記》(今現存者)