Chinese Books

Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse

Red Pine

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Poetry is China's greatest art, and for the past eight centuries Poems of the Masters has been that country's most studied and memorized collection of verse. For the first time ever in English, here is the complete text, with an introduction and extensive notes by renowned translator, Red Pine. Over one hundred poets are represented in this bilingual edition, including many of China's celebrated poets: Li Pai, Wang Wei, Tu Fu, Wang Po, and Ou-yang Hsiu.

Poems of the Masters was compiled during the Sung dynasty (9601278), a time when poetry became the defining measure of human relationships and understanding.

As Red Pine writes in his introduction: "Nothing was significant without a poem, no social or ritual occasion, no political or personal event was considered complete without a few well-chosen words that summarized the complexities of the Chinese vision of reality and linked that vision with the beat of their hearts . . . [Poetry's] greatest flowering was in the T'ang and Sung, when suddenly it was everywhere: in the palace, in the street, in every household, every inn, every monastery, in every village square."

"Chiupu River Song" by Li Pai

My white hair extends three miles
the sorrow of parting made it this long
who would guess to look in a mirror
where autumn frost comes from

Red Pine (the pen name of writer and independent scholar Bill Porter) is one of the world's most respected translators of Chinese literature, bringing into English several of China's central religious and literary texts: Taoteching, The Diamond Sutra, Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, and Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He lives near Seattle, Washington.

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology

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In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original.

Contributors: Robert Ashmore (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Zong-qi Cai; Charles Egan (San Francisco State); Ronald Egan (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara); Grace Fong (McGill); David R. Knechtges (Univ. of Washington); Xinda Lian (Denison); Shuen-fu Lin (Univ. of Michigan); William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Univ. of Wisconsin); Maija Bell Samei; Jui-lung Su (National Univ. of Singapore); Wendy Swartz (Columbia); Xiaofei Tian (Harvard); Paula Varsano (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Fusheng Wu (Univ. of Utah)

Five T'ang Poets

Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, Li Shang-yin

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Outstanding and eminently readable translations 5 out of 5 stars.
32 of 33 people found this review helpful.

"Verses, however masterly, cannot be translated literally from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity." (Bede, English writer and historian, AD 673-735)

For the translator of poetry, and Chinese poetry in particular, the question is: shall I be true to the letter or to the spirit? Usually the answer lies somewhere in the middle. The best translations aim to be true to the spirit without violating the letter more than necessary.

David Young, a poet himself, hopes to be true to the spirit of the five poets from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906) while at the same time trying to create poetry in a different language and period. The impulse that lies behind his book is to rescue the poets "from the often wooden and dogged versions of the scholars" and to recreate the beauty and dignity of the poetry in a language used by an American poet at the end of the 20th century. The results are marvelously readable, beautiful translations that I enjoyed more than any other translations of Chinese poetry I have read before or since.

Preceding the translations, Young has written a short introduction to each of the poets. These include a discussion of the special qualities of the poets' works and a selection of recommended translations by other English authors.

The five poets represented in this book are (1) Wang Wei, a devout Buddhist and the Chinese poet of landscape par excellence who wrote poems of a deeply religious sensibility; (2) Li Po, the Chinese archetype of the "bohemian artist and puckish wanderer," a poet beloved for his Taoist unconventionality; (3) Tu Fu, China's greatest poet according to a widely held view because of his technical brilliance and "vigorous poetry that manages to transcend unhappiness and melancholy by its enormous range and immense humanity"; (4) Li Ho, a poet usually not ranked with the Big Three because he is too innovative and defies classification; and (5) Li Shang-yin, who has a reputation as a decadent versifier but, as Young shows, is a "human and humane artist who feels deeply and sees deeply into mysteries of our common existence."

One of my favorite poems in this collection is "Returning to my cottage." It is a good example of Wang Wei's ability to capture stillness and movement in a landscape, to balance observations of things distant and close by, and to create from these images an atmosphere of serenity tinged with sadness. It is a good example for David Young's style of translation, too:

A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley

one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home

the mountains move off
into darkness

alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon

the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past

in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color

it's sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.

Bottom line: This is one of the few anthologies of classical Chinese poetry in which the English versions of the poems really sound like poetry. There is nothing of the stiff formality and awkwardness of most other translations that disable the lyric voice of the verses. These translations are full of the beauty and dignity of the Chinese originals.

Editorial Review:

Five great poets of the T'ang dynasty (eighth and ninth centuries A.D.) are represented in this collection: Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, and Li Shang-Yin. Each poet is introduced by the translator and represented by a selection that spans the poet's development and career. These constitute some of the greatest lyric poems ever written.

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gary Snyder brought the Chinese Zen poet Han-Shan (Cold Mountain) to prominence through translations that struck a cord with Zen enthusiasts and back-to-nature mystics alike. Now Red Pine, Mike O'Connor, and four other translators have breathed life into the literary descendants of Han-Shan, poet monks who are most at home in misty hills, contemplating "crimson leaves" and "azure depths." Like its Japanese cousin, the haiku, Chinese Zen poetry conveys pregnant images in spare structures that cascade into layers of emotion and rich associations. The Buddhism itself lies offstage, the poems recalling more of Thoreau or Whitman than Hui-neng or Nagarjuna. The translations here pause and flow like the originals, with poet-painter Paul Hansen's renderings of early Sung monks especially brilliant, outshining even the celebrated Burton Watson's translations of the Tang poet Ch'i Chi. For that trip to your mountain hermitage or when simply hiding out in the backyard, you'll find sure companionship in The Clouds Should Know Me By Now. --Brian Bruya

The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

J.P. Seaton

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Superstar Seaton 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 22 people found this review helpful.

In the admittedly rather small world of Chinese literature in translation, J. P. Seaton is a superstar: but even by the standards of those who cater for this niche market, he's always played hard to get. His relatively few but varied publications, always themselves small in scale, frequently in small editions, usually brought out by little presses, and often also small in physical size, have been snapped up by the cognoscenti and subsequently much sought after by those who missed out on their first appearance. His early contributions to Sunflower Splendour were easily the most readable and `literary' translations that this important but frequently tin-eared anthology was able to offer its readers. He has always been one of that small but influential band of American scholar-translators of Chinese literature whose work delights as much for its elegance and skill as for its accuracy.

We are at long last being treated to a liberal sample from the best of these. Shambhala have amassed a magnificent `Selected Translations' from the pen of the master, calling it, perhaps a little mischievously, The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry. Well, it certainly does cover a huge span of time, ranging from some of the earliest recorded poems (dating from perhaps one and a half millennia BCE) right up to the first three decades of the last century; but it would be fair to say that it remains a delightfully quirky and idiosyncratic miscellany.

It's divided into just four sections (which is in itself a witty and audacious feat). From Before: the Beginning (thirty pages) takes us up to the end of the Han dynasty. A Time of Trials (fifteen pages) fast forwards through the next three turbulent centuries or so. The Golden Age (fifty-six pages) encompasses the Tang dynasty's own three centuries of major achievement, and represents the very heart of the book. In Part Four, A Few Strong Voices Still Singing (sixty-eight pages), the succeeding dynasties from that founded by the first Song emperor to that bloodily created by the ill-fated Guomintang's Generalissimo whizz by. Of Mao's even more monstrous and destructive régime (despite its hideous progenitor's own much-vaunted love of classical poetry) nothing is said, and none of its poets are represented.

Each of these sections contains many imperishable gems, revelatory and exemplary translations, not a few from the hands of lesser-known writers (often culled from China's long and venerable Chan-Buddhist tradition) as well as just a few space-fillers, which I can only hope are early exercises. Seaton's version of Zhang Ji's Moored at Maple Bridge, for instance, inserts a quite gratuitous simile: `like a stone struck'--which certainly can't have been derived from any of the seven characters that occur in the original fourth and final line, and which is wholly uncharacteristic of this translator's usually minimalist approach to his work (however, it's immediately preceded by a quite brilliant rendering of the much less famous Coming at Night to a Fisherman's Hut). I've my doubts, too, about Seaton's recourse to archaisms (mainly `thee's, `thou's and `thy's) in his first section: this is presumably modelled on what Pound did with the Shi Jing towards the end of his life, in an interesting, if not wholly successful attempt to recreate for the English reader what the modern Chinese reader experiences when confronted with verses of such great antiquity. But Pound had started off as a Victorian, and could speak the Romantic Gothic lingo like a native; Seaton, by contrast, is not at all at ease with so alien a style, and handles it much less adroitly. On the whole I think translators should remember that no poem was old-fashioned to its first readers, and should endeavour to make it fresh and new again for us.

Normally, however, Seaton's peculiar grace and simplicity when handling the English language suggest, perhaps more than in the case of any other translator, except perhaps for Sam Hamill, an essential sweetness of personality: partly diffidence, and partly mellowness . . . a laid-back approach that is as far from the high-octane verbal gymnastics of, say, Hinton, or the relative authoritativeness and gravitas of Burton Watson (possibly his only real rival in greatness, after the earlier stunning achievements of Pound, Waley, Bynner and Rexroth). Of course, this may well be a carefully cultivated illusion; but I suspect not. If one were to assume, however, that Seaton dashes off his translations in the sort of mildly drunken ecstasy so frequently praised by the many bibulous poets who are perhaps over-represented in the pages of this anthology, then one would be making a serious mistake: almost every one of them has, I would guess, been highly wrought and lovingly polished over the decades. This is the art that hides art. The rhythmic inflections and internal rhymes are subtle, confident and persuasive. On almost very page Seaton presents us with cool, lucid, moving poems in a colloquial modern American idiom that are destined long to outlive him. This is an important publication, and no lover of Chinese literature should be without it.

There are many old friends here; but it's the newcomers that astonish you and take your breath away. Seaton's Du Fu translations, for instance, were unknown to me. How lucky we are to have them in print. Likewise, his Ruan Ji, his Wang Fan-zhi and Han Shan . . . and so many others. I can honestly say that my hands were trembling as I turned the pages and kept on discovering fresh evidence of his sensitivity not just to the nuances of Chinese, but of the target language too. These are vivid, colloquial, gutsy, humorous and poignant glimpses into the vanished worlds of Imperial China across three millennia. Yes, he does limit himself to a certain kind of Chinese poem: the short, meditative, imagistic lyric. One can't imagine Seaton tackling a fu prose-poem, or a yue-fu ballad (though he may well have done so in private, so learned and versatile is he).

My only further wish is that some enlightened publisher (perhaps one of those bearing the imprint of an American university) should, in the not too distant future, present us with a true `Collected Translations', preferably in a hardback edition. In the meantime, this handsome paperback will have to do--and who could reasonably complain?

Editorial Review:

In traditional Chinese culture, poetic artistry held a place that was unrivaled by any other single talent, and was a source of prestige and even of political power. In this rich collection, J. P. Seaton introduces the reader to the main styles of Chinese poetry and the major poets, from the classic Shih Ching to the twentieth century. Seaton has a poet's ear, and his translations here are fresh and vivid.

Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

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The earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history, Mountain Home is vital poetry that feels utterly contemporary.

China's tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" poetry stretches across millennia. This is a plain-spoken poetry of immediate day-to-day experience, and yet seems most akin to China's grand landscape paintings. Although its wisdom is ancient, rooted in Taoist and Zen thought, the work feels utterly contemporary, especially as rendered here in Hinton's rich and accessible translations.

Mountain Home collects poems from 5th- through 13th-century China and includes the poets Li Po, Po Chü-i and Tu Fu. The "rivers-and-mountains" tradition covers a remarkable range of topics: comic domestic scenes, social protest, travel, sage recluses, and mountain landscapes shaped into forms of enlightenment. And within this range, the poems articulate the experience of living as an organic part of the natural world and its processes. In an age of global ecological disruption and mass extinction, this tradition grows more urgently important every day. Mountain Home offers poems that will charm and inform not just readers of poetry, but also the large community of readers who are interested in environmental awareness.

The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent Introduction to a Difficult Book 4 out of 5 stars.
41 of 42 people found this review helpful.

The Book of Songs (Shi Jing) is one of the seminal works of Chinese Civilization, along with the Book of Changes (Yi Jing), the Book of History (Shu Jing) and the Book of Rites (Li Chi). All four of these books were already old when Confucius flourished, and tradition states that they were edited by him into their present form.

Old indeed they are, and virtually inaccessible even to those fairly proficient in Chinese. A mere knowledge of the Classical idiom is no guarantee of understanding them; The Yi Jing in its original Chinese is little more than a skein of characters strung together, each one of them generally to be understood on its own rather than as part of a sentence. The Shi Jing is a book of poetry, but it is poetry from a remote antiquity; it contains many words that occur nowhere else in Chinese literature, the poems usually don't rhyme any more (yes, Chinese poetry rhymes!) and no doubt some of the poems date back to an extremely remote shamanistic past in Chinese history. They are venerated for the moral message contained in them, and also for the spontaneity to life that they express - a quality that is prized so highly in East Asian culture. It is a taproot of East Asian thought, just as the psalms and Homer are for the West.

Which makes Waley's translation all the more amazing, in that he could actually produce a work that is so absorbing and edifying. Waley was something of a genius of translation; he never visited the Far East - he claimed it would ruin his impression of it - but he translated so much of the best of Chinese and Japanese literature, and he did it so well. Some of the items he translated have never been attempted by anybody else, and while there are other translations of the Shi Jing his is far and away the best one to read.

Those who are familiar with Waley's other works may find the book a disappointment, which is unfortunate. This is an extremely difficult work to translate, much harder than the Analects, to say nothing of the popular Chinese novels that Waley also did into English. The problem is bringing the material to life, and I feel that Waley did as much as could be done with it.

This book was, I believe, out of print for quite a few years. I'm glad to see it's back.

Editorial Review:

One of the five Confucian classics, The Book of Songs (Shijing) is the oldest collection of poetry in world literature and the finest treasure of traditional songs left from antiquity. Where the other Confucian classics treat “outward things: deeds, moral precepts, the way the world works,” as Stephen Owen tells us in his foreword, The Book of Songs is “the classic of the human heart and the human mind.”

The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

Eliot Weinberger

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Editorial Review:

A groundbreaking anthology of classical Chinese translations by giants of Modern American poetry.

A rich compendium of translations, The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry is the first collection to look at Chinese poetry through its enormous influence on American poetry. Weinberger begins with Ezra Pound's Cathay (1915), and includes translations by three other major U.S. poets—William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder—and an important poet-translator-scholar, David Hinton, all of whom have long been associated with New Directions.

Moreover, it is the first general anthology ever to consider the process of translation by presenting different versions of the same poem by various translators, as well as examples of the translators rewriting themselves. The collection, at once playful and instructive, serves as an excellent introduction to the art and tradition of Chinese poetry, gathering some 250 poems by nearly 40 poets. The anthology also includes previously uncollected translations by Pound; a selection of essays on Chinese poetry by all five translators, some never published before in book form; Lu Chi's famous "Rhymeprose on Literature" translated by Achilles Fang; biographical notes that are a collage of poems and comments by both the American translators and the Chinese poets themselves; and also Weinberger's excellent introduction that historically contextualizes the influence Chinese poetry has had on the work of American poets.

The Selected Poems of Li Po

Bai Li, Po Li, Li Po

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TRULY THE MOST POWERFUL CHINESE POET OF THE LAST 1000 YEARS 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 27 people found this review helpful.

Li Po( a.k.a. Le Pih, Ly Pe, Li Tai-pe) brandishes a simple albeit powerful elegance with his gift of the written word.Bringing to mind the vast panoramic expanses and the soothing beauty of ancient China he will transport you to a splendid land of dreams.In his verse you will be reminded that mankind of all nationalities still relive the same emotions, the same issues over 1000 years later.Delicate and fragile as the cherry blossom in places, tainted and grotesque as a Foo dog in others. I don't own this particular copy. My copy was published in 1928 and translated by Shigeyoshi Obata. It also is more inclusive of Li Po's work. Reading from it always sends an electric thrill through my nerves. Truly one of the Earth's greatest poets ever to breath. "I saw the moonlight before my couch, And wondered if it were not the frost on the ground. I raised my head and looked out on the mountain moon; I bowed my head and thought of my far-off home."

Editorial Review:

by acclaimed translator of Tu Fu

The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien

T'Ao Ch'Ien

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one of China great poets, a great american translator 5 out of 5 stars.
40 of 41 people found this review helpful.

I teach Chinese literature in translation, and a few other things, at the University of North Carolina, and I've used this in class since it came into print. Students who have slept thru earlier Chinese literature snap awake to these. I have called T'ao Ch'ien the first modern poet( in the world). Hinton, one our best translators, makes a good case for my assertion. Since you're here you might note how many of the top new translations from Chinese come from the same publisher... Copper Canyon.

The poet of the earth-centered life of inner peace 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This poet is an inspiration for me. T'ao Ch'ien came from a respectable, connected family. He received a good education in the classics. He entered government service as he was expected- to serve his emperor, his country, his family. He even served on the staffs of two generals. He had it made.

Then one day he simply walked out on it all. He walked deep into the countryside and became a recluse and a farmer. He did this because he couldn't stand to serve overbearing and arrogant superiors. But mostly, he couldn't stand being distracted from a life of inner peace centered around the flow of nature. It also cut down on his drinking time.

T-ao Ch'ien didn't retire to become a gentleman farmer. He howed his own crops- and the rice jar was often empty. He seemed to have lived a life close to Thoreau's ideal, except that he kept it up for over 40 years until his death- a death that he did not fear.

Don't think that this was an idyllic period in Chinese history. The empire had been driven from the north. Rebellion raged in both the east and west. The empire was disintegrating. The poet talks about how few neighbors he had because the countryside was depopulated. Yet, nowhere will you find poetry that speaks more truthfully about the quiet, harmonious life lived close to the earth. There is no striving here. T'ao Ch'ien had already reached enlightenment before he ever put pen to paper. For a poet that never actually mentions the great Tao, it is obvious that his every moment was spent in its embrace.

The poet makes it clear that he doubts the existance of heaven and of the immortals. He would live his life no differently if they did; he would regard inevitable death no differently. One can not but hope that he was in error here, for if any being deserved a place at the table of the immortals it was T'ao Ch'ien- with an ever flowing wine jar.

Editorial Review:

Chinese, tr David Hinton