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.

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