Chinese Poetic Writing has been considered by many to be one of the most innovative studies of Chinese poetry. Cheng illustrates his text with an annotated anthology of 135 poems from the golden age of Tang Dynasty, featuring lively translations of the works of Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei and other poets. The 1982 translation, based on the original French 1977 edition has been greatly expanded by Cheng with many new additions.

The deepest and most varied of the Tang Dynasty poets, Tu Fu (Du Fu) is, in the words of David Hinton, the “first complete poetic sensibility in Chinese literature.” Tu Fu merged the public and the private, often in the same poem, as his subjects ranged from the horrors of war to the delights of friendship, from closely observed landscapes to remembered dreams, from the evocation of historical moments to a wry lament over his own thinning hair. Although Tu Fu has been translated often, and often brilliantly, David Hawkes’s classic study, first published in 1967, is the only book that demonstrates in depth how his poems were written. Hawkes presents thirty-five poems in the original Chinese, with a pinyin transliteration, a character-by-character translation, and a commentary on the subject, the form, the historical background, and the individual lines. There is no other book quite like it for any language: a nuts-and-bolts account of how Chinese poems in general, and specifically the poems of one of the world’s greatest poets, are constructed. It’s an irresistible challenge for readers to invent their own translations.

The most inovative study of Chinese poetry ever written, François Cheng's Chinese Poetic Writing--now in its first expanded, English-language edition--is an essential read for fans and scholars of Chinese literature and the art of poetry in general. Since its first publication in French in 1977, Chinese Poetic Writing has been considered by many to be the most innovative study of Chinese poetry ever written, as well as a profound and remarkable meditation on the nature of poetry itself. As the American poet Gustaf Sobin wrote, two years after the book’s appearance, “In France it is already considered a model of interdisciplinary research, a source book, and a ‘star’ in the very space it initially explored, traced, and elaborated.” Cheng illustrates his text with an annotated anthology of 135 poems he has selected from the Tang dynasty, presented bilingually, and with lively translations by Jerome P. Seaton. It serves as a book within the book, and an excellent introduction to the golden age of Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, and company. The 1982 translation, long out of print, was based on the first French edition. Since then, Cheng has greatly expanded the book. This is the first English-language edition of the expanded version, with the original translators returning to accommodate the many new additions and revise their earlier work.

This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series (general editor: Victor H. Mair). *Includes rare color images. Chinese poetry, along with many other art forms in China, underwent a highly self-conscious transformation in the first decades of the twentieth century. Poetry, perhaps more than any other art form, did so under the heavy burden of a voluminous literary precedent, a precedent which was in its very format of patterned words inscribed on scrolls--a mark of the Chinese literati tradition. Turning away from this tradition seemed necessary in the context of a political, social, and cultural reform movement (which was designed to strengthen China in the face of increasing international pressure as well as domestic breakdown). At the same time, reforming a poetic tradition which had served as a principal touchstone of aesthetic accomplishment--from its role in Confucian canon as object of contemplation for correct action, to its function as a test of candidate's qualifications to govern through the civil service examination, to its function as national past-time in all manner of social gathering--was a major challenge. The result of such a predicament for poets throughout the twentieth century has been the compulsion to discover a poetic style which resonates with the modern world and yet is rooted in Chinese cultural experience. One way in which poets have been able to accomplish this is by relying on poetry's visuality, be it in the graphic properties of the writing system itself, the visual context of the presentation of the poetic texts, or the acute image details in the poems. The history of approximately one century of modern Chinese poetry production has been addressed broadly in scholarship, but such broad strokes tend to miss important dynamics which fall outside of general narratives. The importance of Chinese visual tradition to modern Chinese poets is a good case in point. Accordingly, this book addresses specific manifestations of the nexus connecting modernity and visuality in Chinese poetry. It begins with a discussion of May Fourth poetics as exemplified in the groundbreaking work of Li Jinfa, China's first "Symbolist" poet. From there the book traces notable developments of visuality in the new form or free verse writing (called Xinshi or "New Poetry") through mid-century modernist experiments in Taiwan (focusing on Ji Xian). From there the book then explores the avant-garde poetry of Luo Qing and Xia Yu before returning to mainland Chinese developments of Misty poets Yan Li and his contemporaries. The work concludes with a wide variety of poet-artists writing and exhibiting in the twenty-first century. Looking across this period of modern Chinese poetry's development, one is able to observe how important the visual-verbal dynamic has been to the innovation of poetic style and method. From the twenty-first century on, such multi-media expressions will likely continue to grow; this is a function of a Chinese aesthetic tradition pairing word and image and will continue to manifest in new and more inventive ways. This is an important book for Asian literary and art history studies and history collections

The book also includes an extended section of criticism by and about women writers.

First published in 1919 by Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa’s essay on the Chinese written language has become one of the most often quoted statements in the history of American poetics. As edited by Pound, it presents a powerful conception of language that continues to shape our poetic and stylistic preferences: the idea that poems consist primarily of images; the idea that the sentence form with active verb mirrors relations of natural force. But previous editions of the essay represent Pound’s understanding—it is fair to say, his appropriation—of the text. Fenollosa’s manuscripts, in the Beinecke Library of Yale University, allow us to see this essay in a different light, as a document of early, sustained cultural interchange between North America and East Asia. Pound’s editing of the essay obscured two important features, here restored to view: Fenollosa’s encounter with Tendai Buddhism and Buddhist ontology, and his concern with the dimension of sound in Chinese poetry. This book is the definitive critical edition of Fenollosa’s important work. After a substantial Introduction, the text as edited by Pound is presented, together with his notes and plates. At the heart of the edition is the first full publication of the essay as Fenollosa wrote it, accompanied by the many diagrams, characters, and notes Fenollosa (and Pound) scrawled on the verso pages. Pound’s deletions, insertions, and alterations to Fenollosa’s sometimes ornate prose are meticulously captured, enabling readers to follow the quasi-dialogue between Fenollosa and his posthumous editor. Earlier drafts and related talks reveal the developmentof Fenollosa’s ideas about culture, poetry, and translation. Copious multilingual annotation is an important feature of the edition. This masterfully edited book will be an essential resource for scholars and poets and a starting point for a renewed discussion of the multiple sources of American modernist poetry.

With this groundbreaking collection Classical Chinese Poetry, translated and edited by the renowned poet and translator David Hinton, a new generation will be introduced to the work that riveted Ezra Pound and transformed modern poetry. The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton's book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet's work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poets. From the classic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on nature, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight. And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel remarkably fresh and contemporary, presenting a literature both radically new and entirely resonant, in Classical Chinese Poetry.