Evoking Tang : An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

Evoking Tang : An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry by Qiu Xiaolong, 162 pages.
Early in the pandemic, wandering around the empty library, I found this book. I wanted to read a book of Chinese poetry and was delighted to find this signed copy of verse translated by local author Qiu Xiaolong. The poems featured here were written between 618 and 907. The poets highlighted in this volume include Bai Juyi, Wang Wei, and Li Bai. The love poems of Yu Xuanji, who was executed in her late 20s for fatally disciplining one of her fellow nuns, include:

"Look Out from the Riverside"

Myriads of upon
myriads of maple leaves
silhouetted against the bridge,
a few sails return late in the dusk.

How do I miss you?

My thoughts follow you
like water in the West River,
flowing eastward, never-ending,
day and night

The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China

The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China edited and translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung, 150 pages.

In this collection Rexroth presents poems of love and loss, contemplative poems and even some by Chao Luan-Luan (from sometime around the 8th century) that were advertisements for the services of courtesans. All of them were written by women poets; the oldest, "A Song of Magpies" by Lady Ho, who lived somewhere 300 BCE, and the most recent were from poets who were still alive in 1973 when the book was first published. Li Ch'ing-chao, said by the editors to be "universally considered tobe China's greatest woman poet. . ." figures prominently in this volume.
In "Spring Ends," a poem mourning the passing of a loved one, she says:

The wind stops.

Nothing is left of Spring but fragrant dust. 

Although it is late in  the day,

I have been too exhausted to comb my hair. 

Our furniture is just the same,

But he no longer exists.

I am unable to do anything at all,

Before I can speak my tears choke me.

I hear that Spring at Two Rivers

Is still beautiful.

I had hoped to take a boat there,,

But I am afraid my little boat

Is too small to ever reach Two Rivers, 

Laden with my heavy sorrow.

Many of the modern poets, perhaps unsurprisingly given the time of publication, seem to be from Taiwan.
As with other similar Rexroth titles, 100 Poems from the Chinese, and Love and the Turning Year, the biographical essays about the poets add tremendously to the book.A lovely collection.

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth, 148 pages.
Rexroth's book of translated poems includes 35 written by Tu Fu a scholar who wrote in the 700s. Rexroth refers to Tu Fu as "the greatest non-epic, non dramatic poet who has survived in any language."

Tu Fu:

A hawk hovers in the air.
Two white gulls float on the stream.
Soaring with the wind, it is easy
To drop and seize
Birds who foolishly drift with the current.
Where the dew sparkles in the grass,
The spider's web waits for its prey.
The processes of nature resemble the business of men.
I stand alone with ten thousand sorrows.

The other seventy or so poems are a variety of poets of the Sung dynasty, who wrote between 1000 and the 1200s.

This from Su Tung Po:
I fish for minnows in the lake.
Just born, they have no fear of man.
And those who have learned,
Never come back to warn them.

Rexroth's explanatory notes are illuminating, though at times seem disdainful (of the presumptive audience, not of the poets or poems). The poet states that ". . . I do not consider these notes at all necessary. They just seem to be the custom."
The book also features a select bibliography which includes a succinct comments by Rexroth about each work; from one-word judgements like "excellent," or "fair," or "biased" to the longer notes like "the less said the better" about Ezra Pound's The Classic Anthology.
Beautiful poems.

Check our catalog.