Gathers poems about travel, nature, daily life, friendship, and exile by the eleventh-century Chinese poet, who wrote under the name Su Tung-p'o.

Gathers poems about travel, nature, daily life, friendship, and exile by the eleventh-century Chinese poet, who wrote under the name Su Tung-p'o.

We find timeless expressions of human experience in the poems of Su Dongpo (1037-1101), translated with grace and power by Lin and Young. We follow Dongpo through his life of political exiles while he ponders the transitory nature of reality with beauty and a sober lightness.

Even as a young boy in 11th-century China, it was clear that Su Shih was special. After finding a rare inkstone, he began to write stories and verses expressing his love of the natural world. His words flowed effortlessly, his brush danced across the paper. Su Shih grew up to become a leading scholar and statesman, eventually taking the name Su Dongpo. He promoted justice and condemned corruption - often at his own peril. Su Dongpo's life transcends the ages and is a shining example of dignity, ingenuity, courage and resilience.

Remembered today primarily as a poet, calligrapher, and critic, the protean Su Shi was an outspoken player in the contentious politics and intellectual debates of the Northern Song dynasty. In this comprehensive study, Ronald C. Egan analyzes Su’s literary and artistic work against the background of eleventh-century developments within Buddhist and Confucian thought and Su’s dogged disagreement with the New Policies of Wang Anshi. Egan explicates Su’s views on governance, the classics, and Buddhism; and he describes Su’s social-welfare initiatives, arrest for disloyalty, and exiles. Finding a key to the richness of Su’s artistic activities in his vacillation on the significance of aesthetic pursuits, Egan explores Su’s shi and ci poetry and Su’s promotion of painting and calligraphy, looking specially at the problem of subjectivity. In a concluding chapter, he reconsiders Su’s role as a founder of the wenren (“literati”) and challenges the conventional understanding of both Su and the Northern Song wenren generally.

Arthur Sze has rare qualifications when it comes to translating Chinese: he is an award-winning poet who was raised in both languages. A second-generation Chinese-American, Sze has gathered over 70 poems by poets who have had a profound effect on Chinese culture, American poetics and Sze's own maturation as an artist. Also included is an informative insightful essay on the methods and processes involved in translating ideogrammic poetry. MOONLIGHT NIGHT by Tu Fu can only look out alone at the moon. From Ch'ang-an I pity my children who cannot yet remember or understand. Her hair is damp in the fragrant mist. Her arms are cold in the clear light. When will we lean beside the window and the moon shine on our dried tears? Sze's anthology features poets who have become literary icons to generations of Chinese readers and scholars. Included are the poems of the great, rarely translated female poet Li Ching Chao alongside the remorseful exile poems of Su Tung-p'o. This book will prove a necessary and insightful addition to the library of any reader of poetry in translation. The poets include: T'ao Ch'ien Wang Han Wang Wei Li Po Tu Fu Po Chü-yi Tu Mu Li Shang-yin Su Tung-p'o Li Ch'ing-chao Shen Chou Chu Ta Wen I-to Yen Chen Arthur Sze is the author of six previous books of poetry, including The Redshifting Web and Archipelago. He has received the Asian American Literary Award for his poetry and translation, a prestigious Lannan Literary Award, and was recently a finalist for the Leonore Marshall Poetry Prize. He teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. from A Painting of a Cat Nan Ch'uan wanted to be reborn as a water buffalo, but who did the body of the malicious cat become? Black clouds and covering snow are alike. It took thirty years for clouds to disperse, snow to melt. -Pa-ta-shan-jen (1626-1705) The Last Day Water sobs and sobs in the bamboo pipe gutter. Green tongues of banana leaves lick at the windowpanes. The four sur

A new bilingual collection of this Sung Dynasty master.