One Hundred Poems from the Chinese

by Kenneth Rexroth

The lyrical world of Chinese poetry in faithful translations by Kenneth Rexroth. The lyric poetry of Tu Fu ranks with the greatest in all world literature. Across the centuries―Tu Fu lived in the T'ang Dynasty (731-770)―his poems come through to us with an immediacy that is breathtaking in Kenneth Rexroth's English versions. They are as simple as they are profound, as delicate as they are beautiful.

Thirty-five poems by Tu Fu make up the first part of this volume. The translator then moves on to the Sung Dynasty (10th-12th centuries) to give us a number of poets of that period, much of whose work was not previously available in English. Mei Yao Ch'en, Su Tung P'o, Lu Yu, Chu Hsi, Hsu Chao, and the poetesses Li Ch'iang Chao and Chu Shu Chen. There is a general introduction, biographical and explanatory notes on the poets and poems, and a bibliography of other translations of Chinese poetry.

Genres: Poetry, China, Literature, Asia, Classics, Chinese Literature, Asian Literature

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist.

He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the "Father of the Beats" by Time magazine.

Largely self-educated, Rexroth learned several languages and translated poems from Chinese, French, Spanish, and Japanese. He was among the first poets in the United States to explore traditional Japanese poetic themes and forms.

Rexroth died in Santa Barbara, California, on June 6, 1982. He had spent his final years translating Japanese and Chinese women poets, as well as promoting the work of female poets in America and overseas.

Reviews

[Annet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spring sun...
On the Day of Cold Food
I go out to smell the perfume of the flowers,
Along the bank of the river.
Happy and at ease,
I let the soft East wind bathe my face.
Everwhere the Spring is blazing
With ten thousand shades of blue
and ten thousand colors of red.
By: Chu Hsi

And one afterthought more...
For ten miles the mountains rise
above the lake. The beauty
of water and mountain is
impossible to describe.
In the glow of evening
a traveler sits in front
Of an inn, sipping wine.
The moon shines above a
little bridge and a single
fisherman. Around the farm
a bamboo fence descends to
the water. I chat with an
old man about work and crops.
Maybe, when the years have come...
When I can lay aside my
cap and robe of office,
I can take a little boat
And come back to this place....

Beautiful... beautiful...beautiful...
While reading this wonderful poetry book, I posted some of the poems in this book.... and now it is finished and I'm sad... Fortunately today the One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese came by mail (here's my review of the prequel 100 Poems from the Japanese, wonderful book as well: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), so I have that to look forward to. I have to add, I'm not an experienced poetry reader, but I do want to read more and more poems because I'm growing to love this genre.
This is a beautiful small volume of poems of various Chinese poets, male and female. Themes are nature, love, grief, death, growing old and such. Still and wonderful language, Kenneth Rexroth did a marvelous job translating into English. It has been a true 'haven of rest' and tranquility in my busy life. Every day I read a few poems, or one only. Truly beautiful, truly recommended!

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I like this book a great deal, I like it somewhat less than Rexroth’s earlier anthology One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, but this may reflect my greater sympathy with the classical Japanese tradition than the classical Chinese tradition. (I concede I speak presumptuously, out of great ignorance; I know these works only in translation.)

Japanese poems are often short (haiku of course, but other forms as well) and yield much of their meaning either immediately or after brief contemplation. They have the effect either of a zen koan or of something similar but slow-cooked: either a sudden illumination or a gradual brightening. Chinese poetry, on the other hand, seems more magisterial, reserved, and allusive, its images often speak to me in a code I find hard to crack. I regret to say that some of the poems here have defeated me (or perhaps I have defeated myself through them. It is, after all, much the same thing.)

Still, there is so much good, accessible stuff in this anthology. Rexroth translates using plain English words, organized with grace and charged with immediacy. He has a poet’s instinct how to end a line and where to place a word. He is particularly good at poems of loss. The “lament of the neglected mistress” genre comes first to mind, for there are many such poems here, but perhaps even more poignant are the poems about the loss of missing friends, of familiar deaths, and the great loss of old age.

The best part of this anthology is the first third: thirty-five poems by Tu Fu, Rexroth’s favorite poet, one of the two greatest of all the poets of China. (The other—ten years his senior—was his friend and mentor Li Po.) Rexroth chose these thirty-five poems from the thousand and a half works of Tu Fu’s which are extant, and, and he tells us that the translation of these particular pieces took place over a period of many years. Rexroth identified strongly with this scholar poet who lived in a chaotic age, and describes him as “the creator of an elaborate poetic personality, a fictional character half-mask, half revelation.” Rexroth communicates his personal concerns through the mask of Tu Fu extremely effectively—perhaps more effectively—than in his own poetry.

To give you an idea of the riches within, I will offer here three poems. One of the thirty five by Tu Fu, and the only one included by somebody named Hsu Chao. Both poems mention war, and I couldn’t help thinking that they both spoke with particular eloquence to the heart of the pacifist Rexroth, who published this poem in 1970, during the Vietnam War. The last poem is by the lady Li Ch’ing Chao, who adapts the old genre of “the courtesan’s lament” in order to mourn her dead husband.

NIGHT IN THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER

It is late in the year:
Yin and Yang struggle
In the brief sunlight.
On the desert mountains
Frost and snow
Gleam in the freezing night.
Past midnight,
Drums and bugles ring out,
Violent, cutting the heart.
Over the Triple Gorge the Milky Way
Pulsates between the stars.
The bitter cries of thousands of households
Can be heard above the noise of battle.
Everywhere the workers sing wild songs.
The great heroes and generals of old time
Are yellow dust forever now.
Such are the affairs of men.
Poetry and letters
Persist in silence and solitude. —TU FU


THE LOCUST SWARM

Locusts hid their eggs in the corpse
Of a soldier. When the worms were
mature, they took wing. Their drone
Was ominous, their shells hard.
Anyone could tell they had hatched
From an unsatisfied anger.
They flew swiftly towards the North.
They hid the sky like a curtain.
When the wife of the soldier
Saw them, she turned pale. Her breath
Failed her. She knew he was dead
In battle, his corpse lost in
The desert. That night she dreamed
She rode a white horse, so swift
It left no footprints, and came
To where he lay in the sand.
She looked at his face, eaten
By the locusts, and tears of
Blood filled her eyes. Ever after
She would not let her children
Injure any insect which
Might have fed on the dead. She
Would lift her face to the sky
And say, “O locusts, if you
Are seeking a place to winter
You can find shelter in my heart. —HSU CHAO


ALONE IN THE NIGHT

The warm rain and pure wind
Have just freed the willows from
The ice. As I watch the peach trees,
Spring rises from my heart and blooms on
My cheeks. My mind is unsteady,
As if I were drunk. I try
To write a poem in which
My tears will flow together
With your tears. My rouge is stale.
My hairpins are too heavy.
I throw myself across my
Gold Cushions, wrapped in my lonely
Doubled quilt, and crush the phoenixes
In my headdress. Alone, deep
In bitter loneliness, without
Even a good dream, I lie
Trimming the lamp in the passing night. --LI CH’ING CHAO

[Steve]

Ma Yuan (1160/5 – 1225): Walking on a Mountain Path In Spring


Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), outstanding American poet, literary critic and essayist, was also an accomplished translator of classical Chinese and Japanese poetry (and nearly a dozen other languages). Not unexpectedly, his interest in such poetry influenced his own poems, and, necessarily, his own poetics strongly influenced his translations. An notable side note in this connection is that he “translated” a book of poems, The Love Poems of Marichiko, by “a young Japanese woman”, which convincingly reflected the feelings of a then contemporary Japanese woman. It was later revealed that Rexroth was the author. He was also the first to translate into English numerous Chinese and Japanese female poets, who were largely ignored by translators in the last century. In addition to the women appearing in general collections like the one under review, he also published two books dedicated solely to the work of poetesses, one of translations from the Chinese and the other from Japanese.

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese was the third volume of East Asian translations from Rexroth I read. The first two were quite successful translations of classical Japanese poetry:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

In this book Rexroth offers 35 poems from Tu Fu (or Du Fu : 712-770) and a larger selection of various poets from the Sung (or Song) dynasty (960-1278).

Translations are problematic in general, and translations of classical Chinese poetry are particularly difficult (I discuss some of the reasons for this in my review of a book of translations of some of Wang Wei’s poems:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

But I also explain there why I feel it is still worthwhile to read such translations.) In his introduction to this collection Rexroth admits that many of his translations are quite free, and I want to say a little about this below.

Rexroth opens with Du Fu, one of the most highly regarded poets in the Chinese canon and Rexroth’s favorite poet, presenting 35 of the extant 1,400 poems. It is sometimes useful to think of Chinese high culture as a time-varying mix of Taoist/Buddhist and Confucian influences, and in Du Fu the Confucian/moralist side prevails. His poetry is mostly outward-looking, engaged in society, events, politics, but without excluding inward glances and the bewailing of personal blows delivered by a hard life.

Whenever one translates literature from another culture and time, one of the many decisions one must make is just how far to bring the work into the current time and local culture. It is a difficult decision, and each reader will doubtless have his own idea about what is appropriate. Here is Rexroth’s version of Du Fu’s “Winter Dawn”:

The men and beasts of the zodiac
Have marched over us once more.
Green wine bottles and red lobster shells,
Both emptied, litter the table.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” Each
Sits listening to his own thoughts,
And the sound of cars starting outside.
The birds in the eaves are restless,
Because of the noise and light. Soon now
In the winter dawn I will face
My fortieth year. Borne headlong
Towards the long shadows of sunset
By the headstrong, stubborn moments,
Life whirls past like drunken wildfire.

This is a successful poem, as such, but for my tastes Rexroth has brought it way too far out of its context with the quote from a well known holiday song and the cars starting outside. One doesn’t need to know much about T’ang China to know those lines were not in the original, but I am sure there are readers who appreciate these homey touches, even though they were not Du Fu’s. I personally think that there are enough unavoidable distortions involved in translating classical Chinese poetry into contemporary English without tacking on avoidable ones. However, Rexroth uses this extreme setting on the time machine only occasionally.

Indeed, this rendering of another Du Fu poem – which probably refers to the strife of the An Lu-shan Rebellion, when the Emperor went into exile for a few years as the rebels sacked the capital, Chang’an, and both sides executed anybody they considered a possible danger – returns the reader to what I consider to be Du’s characteristic doubly-distilled precise concision:

Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts.
Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing
To myself. Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow scurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty.
The fire has gone out in the stove.
Everywhere men speak in whispers.
I brood on the uselessness of letters.

In the remainder of the book Rexroth brings between 1 and 25 poems from each of 9 Song dynasty poets, including Su Tung P’o (1037-1101) and Lu Yu (1125-1210). Their range is too wide to make a useful generalization. Most of those poems I read with pleasure. So I will just quote one further poem, by Li Ch’ing Chao (Li Qingzhao, 1084-1155) – one of seven in this collection – whom Rexroth calls China’s greatest poetess.

The perfume of the red water lilies
Dies away. The Autumn air
Penetrates the pearl jade curtain.
Torches gleam on the orchid boats.
Who has sent me a message
Of love from the clouds? It is
The time when the wild swans
Return. The moonlight floods the women’s
Quarters. Flowers, after their
Nature, whirl away in the wind.
Spilt water, after its nature,
Flows together at the lowest point.
Those who are of one being
Can never stop thinking of each other.
But, ah, my dear, we are apart,
And I have become used to sorrow.
This love – nothing can ever
Make it fade or disappear.
For a moment it was on my eyebrows,
Now it is heavy in my heart.

By the way, towards the end of his life Rexroth published Li’s Complete Poems in translation.

[Raul]

Interestingly, this anthology starts out with one of the best poets I've read so far, Tu Fu, so that everything else that comes after his poetry doesn't quite live up to the pace set in the beginning. There are still some good non Tu Fu poems here, the themes are repetitive and the quality of the work ranges from writer to writer as would be expected in an anthology.

I'm not sure about Kenneth Rexroth's ability as a Chinese translator, and he honestly states that there was no particular method to translating, some poems being “freer” and others “literal”. Also some of the poems were unavailable to him in Chinese and so he translated them from the French texts he found. I had previously read his translation of Chinese women poets some months ago which I wasn't necessarily moved by, good poems here and there but nothing that's remained with me since, another more knowledgeable reviewer who understands the language brings legitimate questions to his capability. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I will say though, despite the inefficiencies that may exist the Tu Fu poems shine through spectacularly as is the case with great literature that usually even defies errors in translation. Some of my favourite poems:

From Tu Fu
“JADE FLOWER PALACE
The stream swirls. The wind moans in
The pines. Grey rats scurry over
Broken tiles. What prince, long ago,
Built this palace, standing in
Ruins beside the cliffs? There are
Green ghost fires in the black rooms.
The shattered pavements are all
Washed away. Ten thousand organ
Pipes whistle and roar. The storm
Scatters the red autumn leaves.
His dancing girls are yellow dust.
Their painted cheeks have crumbled
Away. His gold chariots
And courtiers are gone. Only
A stony horse is left of his
Glory. I sit on the grass and
Start a poem, but the pathos of
It overcomes me. The future
Slips imperceptibly away.
Who can say what the years will bring?”

“FAREWELL ONCE MORE
TO MY FRIEND YEN AT FENG CHI STATION
Here we part.
You go off in the distance,
And once more the forested mountains
Are empty, unfriendly.
What holiday will see us
Drunk together again?
Last night we walked
Arm in arm in the moonlight,
Singing sentimental ballads
Along the banks of the river.
Your honor outlasted three emperors.
I go back to my lonely house by the river,
Mute, friendless, feeding the crumbling years.”

Reading these poems I had the same feeling I did when I read Sappho, Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikubi, and other poets whose writings have reached us despite a chasm millennia deep. That human beings in different places throughout the world have looked at the same moon and stars (the ones that haven't died off since then at least), and nature, for thousands of years struck with the same feelings of yearning and longing, and that probably, if there are more millennia left for humanity, although it currently seems rather bleak and that this won't happen given the destructive path we're in, some people will look to the skies and will be moved in the same way, and some wonderful literature might even come out of it as was the case with these poets.

[Akemi G.]

I've been checking English translations of Japanese and Chinese poems. (I don't speak Chinese; however, because Chinese characters have meanings, I can "read" them to some extent.) This is one of the books I found at the library.

Let's take a well-known poem by Du Fu (Tu Fu). The original is:
江碧鳥愈白
山青花欲然
今春看又過
何日是帰年

The translation in this book:

*Another Spring*
White birds over the grey river.
Scarlet flowers on the green hills.
I watch the Spring go by and wonder
If I shall ever return home.

There are a few issues, but let's focus on the character 碧 (second character in the first line), which is translated grey.

Really? I looked it up to make sure. It says blue green. Like this. The color of a certain jasper. And this makes sense. The poem contrasts the white bird flying over the deep blue green river; the bird looks even whiter against the background. The first two lines praise the beauty of spring! And how sad, in contrast, the poet is in the following two lines.

The color grey just doesn't work.

According to the Introduction, the translation was done by some knowledgeable people and checked repeatedly by the Chinese "friends." Oh. We should be concerned. Nothing personal against Mr. Rexroth, who took the trouble of compiling this anthology--I know it's a lot of work. I'm just concerned over the general level of translation. It's not just this book; I've been finding similar issues in almost every book I check. (Too many to review on GR.)

Hopefully, there'll be better translation works in the near future, and English-speaking people will enjoy Asian poetry more.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took an Asian Poetry course during my undergrad years (in my university's East Asian Studies department). As our initiation into Chinese verse, our class was asked to read a Penguin Classics translation of Li Po and Tu Fu. From this assignment, I took away the impression that classic Chinese poetry does not suit my taste well: I found it orderly to a fault, weighed down with end-stopped ideas, rather static nature imagery, Confucian doctrinairism, irritating sentimentality about the hearth of home, etc. I'm aware that this verdict probably reflects my own character flaws at that time, rather than any quality inherent in Li Po or Tu Fu.

Re-attempting to tackle the poetry of Tu Fu and his countrymen 4 years later, this time in Rexroth's translation, I appreciate it somewhat more than before. Rexroth renders these poems in a modernity-friendly free-verse style, with frequent enjambments. I found his endnotes helpful in providing biographical and historical context, filtered through his lively opinions. However, I still can't honestly say that classic Chinese poetic conventions and set-pieces are my cup of tea. (In particular, the self-pitying passivity of the female speakers in Li Ch'ing Chao's and Chu Shu Chen's verse struck me as ever-so-slightly pathetic/annoying.)

[Aoi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful <3

A major, major chunk of credit goes to Tu Fu, for these timeless gems




We still love each other as
We did when we were schoolboys.
Tomorrow morning mountain peaks
Will come between us, and with them
The endless, oblivious
Business of the world.

XX

Midnight, we cross an old battlefield.
The moonlight shines cold on white bones.

XX

In the winter dawn I will face
My fortieth year. Borne headlong
Towards the long shadows of sunset
By the headstrong, stubborn moments,
Life whirls past like drunken wildfire.

XX

The great heroes and generals of old time
Are yellow dust forever now.
Such are the affairs of men.
Poetry and letters
Persist in silence and solitude.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I prefer prose to poetry, but this small collection of Tang and Song Dynasty poets was a real treat for me. Once I opened this book I couldn't put it down, at least not for long. I whiled away a few hours, enjoying these poets meditations on life, their confessions and worries, their sensibility for the beauty of nature and their ability to represent every day life in a pleasing manner.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpS84...

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rexroth has here rendered, not C, but CXIV poems from the Chinese, into an English at home with Pound in his block of Chinese cantos--flanked, those, by the fifth decad and dambed Adams ones, and thereby excepting in relation to the present volume, of course, any political or economical affinities; which is to say, this too of course, that Rexroth's isn't the stuff of Kung transposed to verse. ... The points being: (i) isolation, and (ii) elegant compression, but which latter this reader must qualify as 'effortless'--'compression' seeming to suggest the labored stuffing of things into a space the dimensions of which hadn't been drawn to accommodate much stuff. Nay; for Tu Fu, Mei Yao Ch'en, Su Tung P'o, Lu Yu, Chu Hsi, Hsu Chao, Li Ch'ing Chao and Chu Shu Chen share this EFFORTLESS quality of quantity--the encapsulation of mere moment--of the ineffable to be found in the everyday--of spring; the south wind; a full moon--another spring; an evening walk by the river. Here is the Wild-Flower Man and the rain on the river. What wonders!

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought a used copy of this book after reading An American Gospel by Erik Reece. I was familiar, somewhat, with Rexroth from a recording of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" stumbled across during my introduction to Beat writers. The idea of reading ancient-ish Chinese poetry in translation didn't appeal to me, but this book has been an unqualified delight. Read slowly over months, the clearness, stillness, and directness of these poems is moving. So many of them traverse the same ground, the seasons, rhythms of work, and the joys and disappointments of family life. Beginning with 35 poems of Tu Fu, an eighth century poet Rexroth calls the best non-epic, non-dramatic poet preserved in any language, and then jumping to the 11th and 12th century for a review of several Sung Dynasty poets, this collection offers the quotidian and the ancient filtered, often times through European languages and finally into English, into poems exotic and relatable and ultimately intimate and personal while talking about near universal experiences. I will return to this again and again. Highest of recommendations.

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

CXIV
Alone

I raise the curtains and go out
To watch the moon. Leaning on the
Balcony, I breathe the evening
Wind from the west, heavy with the
Odors of decaying Autumn.
The rose jade of the river
Blends with the green jade of the void.
Hidden in the grass a cricket chirps.
Hidden in the sky storks cry out.
I turn over and over in
My heart the memories of
Other days. Tonight as always
There is no one to share my thoughts.

—Chu Shu Chen

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think one ever really finishes reading a good book of poetry and this one is very good indeed. A serendipitous used bookstore find, I know that I will pick up this book many times over the years, open a page at random and be transported.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than the Japanese collection of the same name. A bit more complex but not by very much. There was one poem called "The Locust Swarm" that stood out above the rest by a very large margin. It was the only poem from that author they had in this collection, as opposed to other authors who they have a lot of poems by. I've given it 4 stars for that poem, otherwise it'd have been 3 stars. I find that in these collections you have to sift through tons of duds to find maybe 5 to 10 great ones. Still worth it.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a magnificent, wonderful book. One of the best anthologies of Chinese poetry I’ve ever read. I adore Kenneth Rexroth. How he loved this poetry. All that love shows in his translations and notes. Beautiful experience.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure how anyone could not like this 5 stars worth. Not only very decent poetry, but a mini history lesson as well!

[Alice Urchin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did not expect to love this as much as I do. I have a Chu Shu Chen addiction now.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know this is classic poetry and considered in some circles more exalting than Whitman, but by the end it seemed monotonous. The river, the mountains, the seasons, oh my.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these poems. They all generally have the theme of nature & sadness/grief/melancholy


Tu Fu - nature & aging & melancholy
XXXIII
Stars and Moon on the River (this poem makes me think of autumn, and the scene in Jane Eyre when she walks through the crisp evening to mail her letter(
The Autumn night is clear
After the thunderstorm.
Venus glows on the river.
The Milky Way is white as snow.
The Dark sky is vast and deep.
The Northern Crown sets in the dusk.
The moon like a clear mirror
Rises from the great void. When it
Has climbed high in the sky, moonlit
Frost glitters on the chrysanthemums.

Mei Yao Ch'en - deep grief for his beloved wife
One of my favorite lines is from XLII - Sorrow
"My eyes are not allowed a dry season"

Ou Yang Hsiu - springtime and grief
LI Spring Walk to the Pavilion of Good Crops and Peace
The trees are brilliant with flowers
And the hills are green.
The sun is about to set.
Over the immense plain
A green carpet of grass
Stretches to infinity.
The passersby do not care
That Spring is about to end.
Carelessly they come and go
Before the pavilion,
Trampling the fallen flowers

LVI - Reading the poems of an absent friend
"The joys of poetry, for those who appreciate them, increase with time and familiarity, their richness never ends in satiety... But I who am lucky enough to appreciate these pleasures, the more I savour, the deeper I understand, the more I want."

LIX - Old Age
"Chance thoughts from I don't know where crowd upon me. When I get to the end of a train of thought, i have forgotten the beginning. For one thing I retain I forget ten. If I come across something interesting I have no one to talk to about it."


Sun Tung P'o - moonlight & drunkenness
LXXXII - Autumn
The water lilies of summer are gone. They are no more
Nothing remains but their umbrella leaves
The chrysanthemums of Autumn are fading.
Their leaves are white with frost.
The beauty of the year is only a solemn memory.
Soon it will be winter and
Oranges turn gold and the citrons green.

Li Ch'Ing Chao - autumn & loss
LXXV - Autumn evening beside the lake
Wind passes over the lake.
The Swelling waves stretch away
Without limit. Autumn comes with the twilight,
And boats grow rare on the river.
Flickering waters and fading mountains
Always touch the heart of man.
I never grow tired of singing
of their boundless beauty.
The lotus pods are already formed,
And the water lilies have grown old.
The dew has brightened the blossims
of the arrowroot along the riverband.
The herons and seagulls sleep
On the sand withtheir
heads tucked away, as though
they did not wish to see
the men who pass by on the river.

Lu Yu - wind

Chu Hsi - bodies of water

Hsu Chao - locusts on a dead body, grief

Chu Shu Chen - loneliness & age

[Richard Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection, nicely translated and annotated. I enjoyed it a lot.

Tu Fu, with more than thirty poems in this collection, gets more coverage than any of the other poets, but with only two exceptions we get a good number of examples from every poet here. I like it that way, getting five or ten or more poems from the same poet. This gives the reader a chance to form an opinion of them, get a better idea of what they're like, and maybe follow up by finding collections devoted to each one. (That's what I intend to do, anyway.) Some collections like this have lots of poets with only one or two poems each, and I find that less interesting than the way it is here.

The topics and themes of the selections are pretty universal and generally comprehensible to someone not deeply familiar with culture-bound ideas. You don't need to know much about Chinese culture 1000 years ago to make sense of them or enjoy them. There are some helpful notes at the back (which I realized too late) but they aren't essential. I like it that way--just poetry up front, with background information at the back of the book. It's a nicer esthetic, IMO.

I liked the translations, and for probably half of them I liked the formatting as well. I had just an occasional "I wouldn't have done it that way" thought about how to arrange the lines on the page, but it wasn't enough to take me out of the poetry. In general, I found this a pleasure to read, and I think most readers will feel the same.

Recommended. I already hunted up the second volume, and I'm looking forward to it.

[Zuska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars because the poems are beautiful and because I'm happy to have made the acquaintance of more Chinese poets beyond Tu Fu, but not five stars because I suspect these poems may not be the best translations we could ask for, and definitely not placed in enough historical context to satisfy me (e.g. compared to recent anthologies I've read of the poems of Tu Fu and of Persian women's poetry.) The author is pretty upfront about the liberties he took with his translations; one can enjoy these poems as they are but still wish for something different/more. I am glad I read it though. "The Locust Swarm" feels particularly relevant for the present moment. If you love poetry, don't hesitate to pick up this slim volume.

[Mary Strand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious note at the end of the 114 poems, of which 35 were by Tu Fu: "Tu Fu is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a majority of those qualified to speak, the greatest non-epic, non dramatic poet who has survived in any language." THE GREATEST. lolol. Tu Fu's poems left me cold, and I wondered why the editor chose one-third of the poems from him. His note reminds me of the emperor's new clothes: if you don't like Tu Fu's poetry, you must not be qualified to speak.

Luckily, the editor of this collection included 13 poems by Mei Yao Ch'en, which DID move me, and I would've loved more. Aside from the editor's jonesing over Tu Fu's poetry (zzzzz), it felt like a good mix of poetry.

[Drew D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate Rexroth put in the effort to not only find Sung Dynasty poems, but to translate them as well. I imagine it was hard to do in the 50s, so I appreciate the work that went in; but ultimately you can tell this is ancient chinese poetry. If you run a poetry social media account where you repost screenshots of poems, then theres some gems in here. But besides a couple good ones, I mostly just felt indifferent about a lot of them. It is interesting to read how similar life and people were back the compared to today. Some things never change.

[Irene M · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I gave this book 2 stars, but this is probably a case of "it's not you, it's me." Seeing as I know very little about Chinese poetry, culture, or history it might not be a good idea to give much weight to my opinion on this book. Having said that, I did enjoy quite a few of the poems by Tu Fu and I was touched by the fact that some painful experiences (ie loss of spouse or child) are universally devastating wherever and whenever you live.

[Ben Smitthimedhin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"...Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty..." - Tu Fu

Rexroth does a good job at translating the poets' attentive eye towards nature. The emotions that the poets can arouse by describing their static surroundings is characteristic of East Asian poetry in general. A couple good poems here and there here, especially with Tu Fu and Lu Yu, but overall not memorable to me personally.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is, of course, impossible to know what these poems sound like, look like, how they scan, or rhyme if you can't read the original Chinese, but I found several of them to be excellent in Rexroth's translation, especially those of Tu Fu. Rexroth has notes at the end of the text that are helpful.
Also, many thanks to the other reviewers who took the time to show the original poems in Chinese with literal translations.

[Ibn Cereno · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sad to say these poems have not aged well. They work, if and when they work, only as cascades of images, but whatever music they had in the Chinese has been lost, and Rexroth has supplied little to replace it with in English. One might say they are written in "free verse" save for extreme regularity in line length, but there is apparently little motivation for this within the poems themselves, often resulting in awkward line breaks. The poems move, but only just.

[Wyatt Reu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dazzles me just as much as it did when I read a Rexroth Tu Fu poem in my first poetry class. Sensitive and sensual, these are elegant and limpid translations. To first fall in love with Chinese poetry I would recommend Rexroth’s translations though the tradition is vast and he (and the poets he translates) is by no means its definitive voice.

[Ben Palpant · Rating 3 out of 5]

My unfamiliarity with oriental poetry leaves me ill equipped to appreciate this book fully. Certain lines jumped out and like other oriental poetry I’ve read, this poetry is simple and concrete: “I have run off, like a horse whose rider has lost the bit.”

[April Dickinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars / I asked my dad what got him interested in studying Classical Chinese and he gave me this book and its follow up. I really enjoyed the descriptions of nature and the overflowing of emotion, especially love.