Du Fu (712-770 A.D.) is one of the most honored of Chinese poets. He has been called (by Kenneth Rexroth who early translated him) one of the greatest poets "who has survived in any language."
He is certainly one of the earliest. To lend a parallel time frame: the year Du Fu was born Japan was just compiling its first "history," the "Kojiki"; when he was 40 the first version of the enormous Todaiji Buddha was being cast; the year he died Japan's first major poetry collection, the "Manyoshu," was being compiled.
Some 1,400 poems have been attributed to him, although his fame rests on a mere hundred or so. The poems' excellence is attributed to his masterly mix of both literary and demotic language, his unusual realism, his virtuosity in combining all the poetic forms then available, and his innovative and experimental style.