Described as China's greatest woman poet, Li Ching-chao lived from 1084 until 1151 during the final years of the Sung Dynasty.
The poems in this book are arranged in setions based thematically on youth, loneliness, exile, "his death," politics, mysticism, and old age. Natural beauty, a sense of loss, and melancholy run through all these peoms (maybe less so in the "Politics" section) One of my favorites:
Written by Chance
Fifteen years ago, beneath moonlight and flowers,
I walked with you
We composed flower-viewing poems together.
Tonight the moonlight and flowers are just the same.
But how can I ever hold in my arms the same love.
Famed poet Kenneth Rexroth and poet and critic Ling Chung, who in 1972 had translated Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China, worked together to translate these poems
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