This volume presents translations of over 200 poems by the master of The Way of Poetry, who is generally considered to be the last great poet of the classical uta form.

This book contains stories about a poor man named Lane Snipe, who has lost everything, but settling for nothing is not an option. Lane Snipe feels he only has one option, and that is to become a criminal. And what better place to start than robbing banks? Lane Snipe is a smart man, but how smart can a criminal be once outnumbered by the law? Thirteen men, twenty-six guns, and nowhere to runanybody else would surrender, but Lane takes his chances with his back against the wall .

The T'ang dynasty was the great age of Chinese poetry, and Po Chü-i (772-846) was one of that era's most prolific major poets. His appealing style, marked by deliberate simplicity, won him wide popularity among the Chinese public at large and made him a favorite with readers in Korea and Japan as well. From Po Chü-i's well-preserved corpus--personally compiled and arranged by the poet himself in an edition of seventy-five chapters--the esteemed translator Burton Watson has chosen 128 poems and one short prose piece that exemplify the earthy grace and deceptive simplicity of this master poet. For Po Chü-i, writing poetry was a way to expose the ills of society and an autobiographical medium to record daily activities, as well as a source of deep personal delight and satisfaction--constituting, along with wine and song, one of the chief joys of existence. Whether exposing the gluttony of arrogant palace attendants during a famine; describing the delights of drunkenly chanting new poems under the autumn moon; depicting the peaceful equanimity that comes with old age; or marveling at cool Zen repose during a heat wave... these masterfully translated poems shine with a precisely crafted artlessness that conveys the subtle delights of Chinese poetry.

Presents a translation and commentary to the oldest known extant Taoist text, Inward Training (Nei-yeh), which is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation and its resultant insights about human nature and the cosmos. Roth argues that Inward Training is the basis of early Taoism, and suggests that there may be more continuity between early philosophical Taoism and later Taoist religion than scholars have thought.

Winner, 2024 Patrick D. Hanan Prize for Translation, Association for Asian Studies In the first half of the eighteenth century, rival dynasties of Naqshbandi Sufi shaykhs vied for influence in the Tarim Basin, part of present-day Xinjiang. In the 1750s, the collapse of the Junghar Mongol state gave one branch of this family an opportunity to assert their independence in the oasis cities of Kashgar and Yarkand. Others sided with the armies of the Qing dynasty, which were massing on the frontiers to invade. The ensuing conflict saw the region incorporated into the expanding Qing imperium. Three decades afterward, Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari was commissioned to write an account of these Naqshbandi Sufis and their downfall. Blending the genres of collective biography and historical epic, mixing prose and verse, Kashghari’s text vividly depicts religious and political conflicts on the eve of the Qing conquest. It became the most popular and influential Chaghatay-language work to grapple with this divisive period. This volume presents the complete, long recension of In Remembrance of the Saints, translated for the first time into any Western language and extensively annotated with reference to both Islamic and Qing sources. The introduction situates the work in the Inner Asian tradition of Sufi biography and discusses the political factors shaping historical memory in Qianlong-era Xinjiang. Providing a rare local perspective on China’s expansion into Muslim borderlands, this translation sheds light on Xinjiang’s political and religious traditions and makes a foundational work of Inner Asian literature available to students and scholars.

A mesmerizing journey into the depths of love, Letters to the Muse III offers the very real possibility of realizing true love on earth, while retaining loves beautiful mystery. This collection is both personal and impersonal in its approach to the poetic muse. The personal poems describe how she appears to Nalkur in real life, while the impersonal poems delve into the deeper and higher aspects of her personality. Take, for instance, this excerpt from A Spiritual Relationship: Her footprints bore upon the sands Of her timeless walk Across to where the hermit sang And to her spirit talked, Welcoming her presence in His life no more adrift With the winds of chance, romance His spirit came to lift. She settled by his side, her grace Gentle and so kind Was the hand upon his face Of tears that silenced mind; His grief exploded in relief To know she never left Him alone upon the beach Where separation wept. The final volume of this trilogy, these poetic forays focus on Nalkurs vision of the future of his relationship with the muse, the first having covered the past and the second the present. Through this third collection, the poet hopes to achieve a fusion of both human and divine elements of the male-female attraction as an expression of true love.