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In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu
Wei Ying-wu (737–791) is considered one of the great poets of the T’ang Dynasty, ranked alongside such poets as Tu Fu, Li Pai, and Wang Wei. Strangely, though, only a handful of Wei Ying-wu’s poems have ever been translated into English.
True to his reputation as one of the world’s leading translators of Chinese, Red Pine (a.k.a. Bill Porter) translates 175 of Wei’s poems and demonstrates why he is “one of the world’s great poets.” Presented in a bilingual Chinese-English format, with extensive notes and an informative introduction, In Such Hard Times is a long-overdue world premiere.
True to his reputation as one of the world’s leading translators of Chinese, Red Pine (a.k.a. Bill Porter) translates 175 of Wei’s poems and demonstrates why he is “one of the world’s great poets.” Presented in a bilingual Chinese-English format, with extensive notes and an informative introduction, In Such Hard Times is a long-overdue world premiere.
363 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
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July 5, 2018
A courtyard of bamboo and late-night snow
a lone lantern a book on the table
if I hadn't encountered the teaching of no effort
how else could I have gained this life of leisure
Everything Red Pine puts his translator’s hands to exudes suchness. How he manages this is (and should be) a mystery, but it possibly stems from his first-hand explorations into his subjects’ homelands where he sees for himself where they lived and where they died, and where he delves into public records and manuscript variants, doing all his own scholarly dirty work. It also probably stems from his own nature: his self-effacement (as evidenced by his nom de plume) coupled with his Beat-like iconoclastic scholarship a la Gary Snyder. In short he is his own man and wants to learn and see and feel things for his ownself.
This, the first readily available collection in English of the great Tang poet Wei Ying-wu, is yet another example of his selfless mastery. China’s Tang Dynasty was one of the world’s golden ages of poetry, leaving for our endless delectation the likes of Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, and Han Shan. Reading these poets offers so much meat for pondering minds, as each was produced by the same cultural flowering, yet each was so different – Tu Fu the poor struggling aesthete, Li Po the wealthy wild man and wine imbiber, Wang Wei the devout aristocrat, and Han Shan the earthy and ethereal society-loathing hermit. And now there’s Wei Ying-wu.
Wei was a fallen aristocrat, his family losing their wealth in a political rebellion, so throughout his life he struggled, though his struggles were softened by connections that garnered him civil posts, so he never descended into poverty like Tu Fu (though Tu Fu's was voluntary). Being informed by Confucianism he considered it his duty to play his part in civil service, but his various government posts were punctuated by periods of voluntary and involuntary seclusion when he lived in monasteries in the boondocks. While he seems to’ve been very even tempered, and deeply in touch with the spiritual world which provided him with immense perspective on his personal lot, he was also somewhat unsettled, fluctuating between desire for solitude and social involvement. He composed poems throughout his life, poems usually focused on nature and the partings and arrivals of friends and seasons, and his clear-sighted honesty in his work provides a gripping inner narrative of all the changes wrought on his life by his own fluctuant nature and the tumultuousness of the society he lived in. This clear-sighted honesty makes his work universal for the individual interested in seeing through things while in no way missing out on the loveliness (and sadness) of those things.
These are poems that sneak up on you, simple poems that while having a spontaneous feel also have deep resonation and meaning, resounding with the personal and the particular. He is a master.
This is a gorgeous book, sporting a rich introduction by the translator, and each poem is given its own page to occupy, with the original Chinese facing (which allowed me at least a vision of the shape of the original), and each poem comes with its own notes which are never pedantic.
In suburban gardens summer rains have stopped
green shade spreads across vacant yards
working in an office doesn't do any good
and goes against my love of seclusion
suddenly I see your image before me
and the sadness of separation fills my heart
especially when I feel the cool evening air
and hear the din of cicadas
a lone lantern a book on the table
if I hadn't encountered the teaching of no effort
how else could I have gained this life of leisure
Everything Red Pine puts his translator’s hands to exudes suchness. How he manages this is (and should be) a mystery, but it possibly stems from his first-hand explorations into his subjects’ homelands where he sees for himself where they lived and where they died, and where he delves into public records and manuscript variants, doing all his own scholarly dirty work. It also probably stems from his own nature: his self-effacement (as evidenced by his nom de plume) coupled with his Beat-like iconoclastic scholarship a la Gary Snyder. In short he is his own man and wants to learn and see and feel things for his ownself.
This, the first readily available collection in English of the great Tang poet Wei Ying-wu, is yet another example of his selfless mastery. China’s Tang Dynasty was one of the world’s golden ages of poetry, leaving for our endless delectation the likes of Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, and Han Shan. Reading these poets offers so much meat for pondering minds, as each was produced by the same cultural flowering, yet each was so different – Tu Fu the poor struggling aesthete, Li Po the wealthy wild man and wine imbiber, Wang Wei the devout aristocrat, and Han Shan the earthy and ethereal society-loathing hermit. And now there’s Wei Ying-wu.
Wei was a fallen aristocrat, his family losing their wealth in a political rebellion, so throughout his life he struggled, though his struggles were softened by connections that garnered him civil posts, so he never descended into poverty like Tu Fu (though Tu Fu's was voluntary). Being informed by Confucianism he considered it his duty to play his part in civil service, but his various government posts were punctuated by periods of voluntary and involuntary seclusion when he lived in monasteries in the boondocks. While he seems to’ve been very even tempered, and deeply in touch with the spiritual world which provided him with immense perspective on his personal lot, he was also somewhat unsettled, fluctuating between desire for solitude and social involvement. He composed poems throughout his life, poems usually focused on nature and the partings and arrivals of friends and seasons, and his clear-sighted honesty in his work provides a gripping inner narrative of all the changes wrought on his life by his own fluctuant nature and the tumultuousness of the society he lived in. This clear-sighted honesty makes his work universal for the individual interested in seeing through things while in no way missing out on the loveliness (and sadness) of those things.
These are poems that sneak up on you, simple poems that while having a spontaneous feel also have deep resonation and meaning, resounding with the personal and the particular. He is a master.
This is a gorgeous book, sporting a rich introduction by the translator, and each poem is given its own page to occupy, with the original Chinese facing (which allowed me at least a vision of the shape of the original), and each poem comes with its own notes which are never pedantic.
In suburban gardens summer rains have stopped
green shade spreads across vacant yards
working in an office doesn't do any good
and goes against my love of seclusion
suddenly I see your image before me
and the sadness of separation fills my heart
especially when I feel the cool evening air
and hear the din of cicadas
July 21, 2026
With a sigh I left someone dear
and floated off into the mist and fog
with oars bent for Loyang
and Kuangling's bells and treeline fading this morning when we said goodbye
we wondered where we would next meet in a world like a boat on the waves
rising and falling with no shore in sight
-
Our two worlds share this autumn night
we see the same River of Stars
a leaf drops from a towering paulownia
thoughts of going home fill my empty rooms
I worry about the hardships of the people
then too I have my own minor ills
I won't be leaving anytime soon
but my hairline has already slipped away
-
River of Ch'u in light rain
evening bells of Chienyeh
rows of sails spreading out
birds disappearing slowly
Ocean Gate too far to see
riverside trees a distant green
there's no end to goodbye
a pair of silk streams soak my sleeves
-
There's not much excitement in a mountain town
I went to see spring in Kuangling
the fading flowers still welcomed my visit and no one asked if there was someone in my heart
and floated off into the mist and fog
with oars bent for Loyang
and Kuangling's bells and treeline fading this morning when we said goodbye
we wondered where we would next meet in a world like a boat on the waves
rising and falling with no shore in sight
-
Our two worlds share this autumn night
we see the same River of Stars
a leaf drops from a towering paulownia
thoughts of going home fill my empty rooms
I worry about the hardships of the people
then too I have my own minor ills
I won't be leaving anytime soon
but my hairline has already slipped away
-
River of Ch'u in light rain
evening bells of Chienyeh
rows of sails spreading out
birds disappearing slowly
Ocean Gate too far to see
riverside trees a distant green
there's no end to goodbye
a pair of silk streams soak my sleeves
-
There's not much excitement in a mountain town
I went to see spring in Kuangling
the fading flowers still welcomed my visit and no one asked if there was someone in my heart
September 15, 2024
While I always enjoy Red Pine's translations, I really found I could not connect or get interested in the poet's writing. I did find the commentary on each poem a wonderful storehouse of information. This is what really made me keep reading this book. I know I will continue to refer back to it for its historical knowledge and connections for years to come.
July 19, 2023
First of all, this collection of poems is translated by Red Pine, who always does a great job.
Second, Wei Ying-wu writes some deeply affecting poetry that still works in English more than 1000 years later.
So--pretty awesome.
Most of this poetry is 2, 4, or 8 lines of 5 characters, though there are some 7-character lines and other less common formats. And most of the poems are either biographical or part of correspondence, so they reference actual people, places, and events in the poet's life. All pretty standard. What that means to a reader in English is that (as I prefer) we don't get the rhymes found in the original or any real sense of the feel of the language, and we might struggle to identify and understand references that have no meaning to a modern reader, but we do experience the ideas and feeling in these poems, and the translator has done an amazing job of providing context and background information and illuminating allusions that would otherwise remain opaque. We might lose the music, but we get the meaning, and most importantly we experience the humanity.
The poet lived through troubled times--thus the title--including the An Lushan rebellion (and continued troubles afterwards) which created so much chaos and disruption for the country. As a scholar and an official, with a career including many government jobs in many cities, Wei saw how the people lived and suffered all over the empire. "My pitiful fellow officials," he implores, "think of the hardships of those below us." He is referring to peasants who work all day long and can barely pay their taxes, and how families have to provide a worker each year to labor for free on giant projects: "The disaster of war has worn us all down/ there's no vacation from corvée [forced work] and taxes/ the downtrodden masses need help." While trying to enjoy personal downtime, relaxing at a lake, he says, "farmers this month are busy/ living in comfort I think of them toiling/ and wonder how they deal with the heat."
In "Jade Diggers Ballad," he writes:
The government drafts a common man
tells him to dig for Lan River jade
over the ridge, nights away from home,
he sleeps in thickets of thorns in the rain
his wife returns from taking him food
and sobs just south of their home.
In a poem about inspecting flooding along the Ching River, he writes, in part:
I could see the traces of disaster
perfectly good crops in the river...
once-happy homes in ruins...
whole hillsides were washed away...
meanwhile you gentlemen at court
gossip and laugh and think about parties.
It pains him that there is so much that they can't do to help, and even when there is something that might be done, they aren't allowed. One of his jobs was overlooking the corvée, which meant he had to make sure every family did its part in supplying labor for the government, and he was painfully aware of the difficulty of that sacrifice, giving up a good worker when they were most needed at home.
Many of his poems are about visiting with monks or spending time in monasteries, and he often laments not being able to retire to a life of contemplation. He always intends to, but can never quite walk away. "I love to follow trails to monastic retreats," he writes, "to an orchard of fruit trees after a rain.../ where green shade nurtures quiet days.../ my official duties have kept me so busy/ my footsteps have come here too seldom." Other poets and other officials walked away sooner, living more of their own life, but Wei kept taking new positions in the government, trying to do what he could for the people. He remains humble, claiming to be "inept," but you sense he feels like he is doing at least some good. When he's almost blind he finally retires and teaches farmers' children how to read, but by then most of his friends are gone and almost no one comes to visit him. Still, his last known poem is about a visit from a friend in that last year of his life:
You came with New Year's greetings
walking here alone in the bitter cold...
after starting a fire deep in my stove
and closing the door to my empty room
we shared a gourd full of wine
and didn't speak of all the things that went wrong.
Raise a glass to Wei Ying-wu. He really fucking tried.
Second, Wei Ying-wu writes some deeply affecting poetry that still works in English more than 1000 years later.
So--pretty awesome.
Most of this poetry is 2, 4, or 8 lines of 5 characters, though there are some 7-character lines and other less common formats. And most of the poems are either biographical or part of correspondence, so they reference actual people, places, and events in the poet's life. All pretty standard. What that means to a reader in English is that (as I prefer) we don't get the rhymes found in the original or any real sense of the feel of the language, and we might struggle to identify and understand references that have no meaning to a modern reader, but we do experience the ideas and feeling in these poems, and the translator has done an amazing job of providing context and background information and illuminating allusions that would otherwise remain opaque. We might lose the music, but we get the meaning, and most importantly we experience the humanity.
The poet lived through troubled times--thus the title--including the An Lushan rebellion (and continued troubles afterwards) which created so much chaos and disruption for the country. As a scholar and an official, with a career including many government jobs in many cities, Wei saw how the people lived and suffered all over the empire. "My pitiful fellow officials," he implores, "think of the hardships of those below us." He is referring to peasants who work all day long and can barely pay their taxes, and how families have to provide a worker each year to labor for free on giant projects: "The disaster of war has worn us all down/ there's no vacation from corvée [forced work] and taxes/ the downtrodden masses need help." While trying to enjoy personal downtime, relaxing at a lake, he says, "farmers this month are busy/ living in comfort I think of them toiling/ and wonder how they deal with the heat."
In "Jade Diggers Ballad," he writes:
The government drafts a common man
tells him to dig for Lan River jade
over the ridge, nights away from home,
he sleeps in thickets of thorns in the rain
his wife returns from taking him food
and sobs just south of their home.
In a poem about inspecting flooding along the Ching River, he writes, in part:
I could see the traces of disaster
perfectly good crops in the river...
once-happy homes in ruins...
whole hillsides were washed away...
meanwhile you gentlemen at court
gossip and laugh and think about parties.
It pains him that there is so much that they can't do to help, and even when there is something that might be done, they aren't allowed. One of his jobs was overlooking the corvée, which meant he had to make sure every family did its part in supplying labor for the government, and he was painfully aware of the difficulty of that sacrifice, giving up a good worker when they were most needed at home.
Many of his poems are about visiting with monks or spending time in monasteries, and he often laments not being able to retire to a life of contemplation. He always intends to, but can never quite walk away. "I love to follow trails to monastic retreats," he writes, "to an orchard of fruit trees after a rain.../ where green shade nurtures quiet days.../ my official duties have kept me so busy/ my footsteps have come here too seldom." Other poets and other officials walked away sooner, living more of their own life, but Wei kept taking new positions in the government, trying to do what he could for the people. He remains humble, claiming to be "inept," but you sense he feels like he is doing at least some good. When he's almost blind he finally retires and teaches farmers' children how to read, but by then most of his friends are gone and almost no one comes to visit him. Still, his last known poem is about a visit from a friend in that last year of his life:
You came with New Year's greetings
walking here alone in the bitter cold...
after starting a fire deep in my stove
and closing the door to my empty room
we shared a gourd full of wine
and didn't speak of all the things that went wrong.
Raise a glass to Wei Ying-wu. He really fucking tried.
July 30, 2026
if you go into this expecting the usual tang dynasty court poetry, all "i waited to have tea with you and you never showed up but the mountains were evocatively blue in the distance," or "i had to quit my job because of my mysterious foot thing that i refer to only allusively but i sure am sad now" then yeah you'll get that, times a hundred. but the real throbbing heart of this collection (which is only maybe 1/3 of wei yingwu's total assumed output) is buried in the middle: a rough score of elegies for his late wife, who left him with their three children and was obviously his best friend. here he just throws back his head and howls and i don't know how you can be the same after reading them.
in all honesty, i only acquired this book because priest references one of courtier wei's poems in silent reading—an important character's name derives from "chuchou's west stream"—but then i wound up not liking that particular translation as much as some others. otherwise, though? bill's got this guy's number. i was a little frowny at first about the fact that the translation runs the stanzas together, but then i got it: it really does work better, in english. devastatingly good.
in all honesty, i only acquired this book because priest references one of courtier wei's poems in silent reading—an important character's name derives from "chuchou's west stream"—but then i wound up not liking that particular translation as much as some others. otherwise, though? bill's got this guy's number. i was a little frowny at first about the fact that the translation runs the stanzas together, but then i got it: it really does work better, in english. devastatingly good.
May 17, 2022
It's hard to rate a translation of Chinese poetry. Bill's translation is masterful, as usual. In the case of Wei Yingwu, let's say he's not my favorite poet. There are some amazing poems in here and there is definitely an impressive maturity of his writing by the end of his life. Worth reading but again, I like him best when he celebrates Tao Qian ;)
May 4, 2018
An award-winning translation of one of the great poets of the late T'ang-- whose verse captures the spirit of the reeling empire after the catastrophic An Lushan rebellion.
December 1, 2024
A lifelong journey told through poetry. A portal to nearly 1300 years in the past.
January 7, 2013
One of the fascinating and delightful parts of life collections and samplers of poems from a single poet is to be able to observe how the poet's art and heart change over time. Red Pine (Bill Porter) illuminates Wei Ying-wu's changing body of work with small biographical notes under the poems he has translated. This translation is my introduction to Wei Ying-wu in more depth, and one I appreciated.
March 29, 2010
Another wonderful contribution from Red Pine.
February 24, 2013
Bi lingual translation, well done. I can't read a single character of Chinese but it's interesting seeing the actual poems alongside the English translations.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews