CivilWar’s Reviews > The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets > Status Update

"Ai shi ming is an example of Sao poetry at a very low ebb. Here is all the apparatus of the Sao poet [...] [b]ut the inspiration is dead. Image is piled upon image in illustration of the same theme: virtue and talent are not recognized; I am virtuous and talented; therefore I am not recognized; therefore I am miserable. The effect of having this said in 160 lines of verse is monotonous and oppressive."

Well said!

"totally lacking the magic, passion and movement of their originals. The conventions of Chu poetry – the symbolism of plant and flower and the parallels drawn from ancient history and mythology – seem in these poems to have become an end in themselves. The result is a long, almost unrelieved litany of complaint which progresses by mere accumulation and ends only when poet, reader and metaphor are all three exhausted"

"Watching over the young and meek, upholding orphan and widow" - interesting to compare this with Near Eastern depictions of kingship which uses the exact same expression.

David Hawkes is not joking when he calls the self-pitying Confucian-scholar poetry that came in the excellent Li Sao's wake "self-pitying" and "a bore", goodness they really missed what made it such an excellent poem.

As someone who has just written an article for a magazine about Japanese shamanism (among other things) on the Yayoi period, the Nine Songs here are an indispensable wealth of Chinese shamanism primary source material. They're also quite fascinating as oral poetry on their own.