Frontier Taiwan by
Taiwan has evolved dramatically from a little-known island to an internationally acclaimed economic miracle and thriving democracy. The history of modern Taiwanese poetry parallels and tells the story of this transformation from periphery to frontier. Containing translations of nearly 400 poems from 50 poets spanning the entire twentieth century, this anthology reveals Taiwan in a broad spectrum of themes, forms, and styles: from lyrical meditation to political satire, haiku to concrete poetry, surrealism to postmodernism. The in-depth introduction outlines the development of modern poetry in the unique historical and cultural context of Taiwan. Comprehensive in both depth and scope, Frontier Taiwan beautifully captures the achievements of the nation's modern poetic traditions.
"OH, LET ME RETURN!" by
This collection of nature poems of China includes nearly 250 poems by thirty-three poets over two millennia. Part One provides selections from the two oldest anthologies: the Shi Jing ("Classic of Songs") and the Chu Ci ("Songs of the South"). Included in this part are folk songs of ancient China, as well as two long poems by Qu Yuan (340-278 BCE), the first known poet of China. Part Two begins with Tao Yuanming of the Eastern Jin (317-420). It includes not only the well-known poets of the Tang (618-906) and Song (960-1279) periods, such as Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, and Lu You, but also over twenty lesser known poets. Traditionally, there are two genres of nature poems in China: tianyuan shi (field/ garden poems) and shan shui shi (mountain/ water poems). These poems are often read in light of the Daoist philosophy. However, no philosophical understanding of nature is necessary to appreciate what these nature poets "sing." The poems in this collection are not ordinary lyrical songs but songs of longing in which the reader may hear the life spirit's protest against the oppression of human civilization. In his long poem Oh, Let Me Return, Tao Yuanming sings his longing for return to nature, away from "the net of dust." [Subject: Poetry, Chinese History, Chinese Poetry, Asian Studies]
Joy and Sorrow - Songs of Ancient China by
The Shi Jing is the oldest anthology of Chinese songs. It contains 305 songs of ancient China, composed in the 12th to 7th century BCE. The collection is divided into four parts. The present work is a translation of its first part, namely Guo Feng, which translates as "songs of states" within the Zhou kingdom (1122-255 BCE). The Guo Feng songs were mostly sung by the common people of the kingdom. In this respect, they are unlike the songs in the other three parts, which are generally dynastic songs of the Zhou court. The songs included in this translation predate Confucius, many by several centuries. Accordingly, through them one may hear the spontaneous voices of pre-Confucian China. The text of the Shi Jing has come down to us at the present time in familiar Chinese characters. But their usage is so ancient that for centuries even Chinese readers have had to rely on a few standard commentaries, which all gave Confucian, moralistic readings of the songs, even of those that are unmistakably simple love songs. Ha Poong Kim's translation has incorporated the results of some recent Japanese studies which question the traditional, Confucian approach to the text, thereby recovering the original meaning of many songs in the Guo Feng. It is hoped that this Chinese-English Bilingual Edition makes the voices of joys and sorrows of this ancient land audible to a modern readership, not only in the West but also in China as well. (History, Literary Criticism, Confucianism, Asian Studies)
Chinese Poems by
First published in 1946. Here in one volume is a collection of Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry. The book includes some poems from The Book of Songs and 170 Chinese Poems, More Translations and The Temple. Some old translations have been revised and new notes and explanatory material added.
The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang by
In The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang, Mary Anne Cartelli introduces a significant corpus of Chinese Buddhist poems from the Dunhuang manuscripts celebrating Mount Wutai. They offer important literary evidence for the transformation of the mountain into the earthly paradise of the bodhisattva Ma juśrī by the Tang dynasty.
A Needle Hole through the Constellations by
This pocket-sized paperback is one of the thirty titles published for 2019 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2019 is Speech and Silence. From 19–24 November 2019, 30 invited poets from various countries will be in Hong Kong to read their works based on the theme Speech and Silence. Included in the anthology and box set, these unique works are presented with Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.
Women's Poetry of Late Imperial China by
This study of poetry by women in late imperial China examines the metamorphosis of the trope of the "inner chambers" (gui), to which women were confined in traditional Chinese households, and which in literature were both a real and an imaginary place. Originally popularized in sixth-century "palace style" poetry, the inner chambers were used by male writers as a setting in which to celebrate female beauty, to lament the loneliness of abandoned women, and by extension, to serve as a political allegory for the exile of loyal and upright male ministers spurned by the imperial court. Female writers of lyric poetry (ci) soon adopted the theme, beginning its transition from male fantasy to multidimensional representation of women and their place in society, and eventually its manifestation in other poetic genres as well. Emerging from the role of sexual objects within poetry, late imperial women were agents of literary change in their expansion and complication of the boudoir theme. While some take ownership and de-eroticizing its imagery for their own purposes, adding voices of children and older women, and filling the inner chambers with purposeful activity such as conversation, teaching, religious ritual, music, sewing, childcare, and chess-playing, some simply want to escape from their confinement and protest gender restrictions imposed on women. Women's Poetry of Late Imperial China traces this evolution across centuries, providing and analyzing examples of poetic themes, motifs, and imagery associated with the inner chambers, and demonstrating the complication and nuancing of the gui theme by increasingly aware and sophisticated women writers.
On Cold Mountain by
In this first serious study of Hanshan ("Cold Mountain"), Paul Rouzer discusses some seventy poems of the iconic Chinese poet who lived sometime during the Tang dynasty (618-907). Hanshan's poems gained a large readership in English-speaking countries following the publication of Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and Gary Snyder's translations (which began to appear that same year), and they have been translated into English more than any other body of Chinese verse. Rouzer investigates how Buddhism defined the way that believers may have read Hanshan in premodern times. He proposes a Buddhist poetics as a counter-model to the Confucian assumptions of Chinese literary thought and examines how texts by Kerouac, Snyder, and Jane Hirshfield respond to the East Asian Buddhist tradition.
City at the End of Time by
Written by Leung Ping-kwan in the 1980s and 1990s, this volume of poetry evokes the complexity of Hong Kong city life in the critical moments preceding the 1997 handover. The poet muses upon the problems of cultural identity and the passing of time, and explores the relationship between poetry and other genres and media within a cross-cultural and cross-border context. An introduction by Ackbar Abbas in the original edition relates Leung's writing to the cultural and political space of Hong Kong in the 1990s. This expanded bilingual version adds a new essay by Esther Cheung, and also a recent conversation between Leung and three critics, which provides insights on how Leung's poetry still resonates powerfully after two decades. The book invites readers to look afresh at Leung's meditative poetry and probe into the contradictory realities of this changing postcolonial city.
Tantric Treasures by
Roger Jackson provides accurate, accessible translations of three classics of medieval Indian Buddhist mysticism: the "couplet-treasuries" of the great tantric masters Saraha, Kanha, and Tilopa. Since their composition around 1000 CE, these poems have exerted a powerful influence on spirituallife, as well as poetry and song, in India, Nepal, and Tibet. Jackson's fresh translations allow the poetry to shine through, capturing the sense and spirit of the poems in the original. Jackson offers a thorough introduction that deftly summarizes the latest scholarship, situating the poems intheir historical context and making them accessible not only to scholars but also to students and practitioners.
Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India by
The oldest surviving anthology of lyric poems from India, the Sattasai presents the many aspects of love and provides a realistic counterpart to the Kāmasūtra.
Tamil Love Poetry by
Dating from the early decades of the third century C.E., the Ainkurunuru is believed to be the world's earliest anthology of classical Tamil love poetry. Commissioned by a Cera-dynasty king and composed by five masterful poets, the anthology illustrates the five landscapes of reciprocal love: jealous quarreling, anxious waiting and lamentation, clandestine love before marriage, elopement and love in separation, and patient waiting after marriage. Despite its centrality to literary and intellectual traditions, the Ainkurunuru remains relatively unknown beyond specialists. Martha Ann Selby, well-known translator of classical Indian poetry and literature, takes the bold step of opening this anthology to all readers, presenting crystalline translations of 500 poems dense with natural imagery and early examples of South Indian culture. Because of their form's short length, the anthology's five authors rely on double entendre and sophisticated techniques of suggestion, giving their poems an almost haikulike feel. Groups of verse center on one unique figure, in some cases an object or an animal, in others a line of direct address or a specific conversation or situation. Selby introduces each section with a biographical sketch of the poet and the conventions at work within the landscape. She then incorporates notes explaining shifting contexts. Excerpt: He has gone off all by himselfbeyond the wasteswhere tigers used to prowland the toothbrush trees grow tall,their trunks parched,on the flinty mountains, while the lovely folds of your loins, wide as a chariot's seat, vanish as your circlet worked from gold grows far too large for you.
Basho's Haiku by
A wonderful new translation of the poetry of Basho--Zen monk, poet of nature, and master of the haiku form.
Far Beyond the Field by
Far Beyond the Field is a first-of-its-kind anthology of haiku by Japanese women, collecting translations of four hundred haiku written by twenty poets from the seventeenth century to the present. By arranging the poems chronologically, Makoto Ueda has created an overview of the way in which this enigmatic seventeen-syllable form has been used and experimented with during different eras. At the same time, the reader is admitted to the often marginalized world of female experience in Japan, revealing voices every bit as rich and colorful, and perhaps even more lyrical and erotic, than those found in male haiku. Listen, for instance, to Chiyojo, who worked in what has been long thought of as the dark age of haiku during the eighteenth century, but who composed exquisitely fine poems tracing the smallest workings of nature. Or Katsuro Nobuko, who wrote powerfully erotic poems when she was widowed after only two years of marriage. And here, too, is a voice from today, Mayuzumi Madoka, whose meditations on romantic love represent a fresh new approach to haiku.
Man'yōshū (Book 14) by
Book fourteen of the Man'yōshῡ ('Anthology of Myriad Leaves') continues Alexander Vovin's new English translation of this 20-volume major work which was compiled between c.759 and 782 AD, making it the earliest and largest Japanese poetic anthology in existence and thus the most important compendium of Japanese culture of the Asuka and Nara periods. Book fourteen is the third volume of the Man'yōshῡ to be published to date (following books fifteen (2009) and five (2011)) and contains 230 tanka poems, together with a few significant variants, bringing the total to 249. This volume will be followed by publication of book twenty (2013) (instead of the previously announced book seventeen) on account of the fact that book twenty also contains many poems by Border Guards written in the same Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ) as do many of the Azuma-period poems that are contained in book fourteen. Each volume of this new translation contains the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary.
For All My Walking by
In April 1926, the Japanese poet Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) set off on the first of many walking trips, journeys in which he tramped thousands of miles through the Japanese countryside. These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment. Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem or group of poems. In For All My Walking, master translator Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own. Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the emotional force at the core of the poems. This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical context to Taneda Santoka's work.
Haiku Before Haiku by
While the rise of the charmingly simple, brilliantly evocative haiku is often associated with the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the form had already flourished for more than four hundred years before Basho even began to write. These early poems, known as hokku, are identical to haiku in syllable count and structure but function differently as a genre. Whereas each haiku is its own constellation of image and meaning, a hokku opens a series of linked, collaborative stanzas in a sequence called renga. Under the mastery of Basho, hokku first gained its modern independence. His talents contributed to the evolution of the style into the haiku beloved by so many poets around the world--Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Billy Collins being notable devotees. Haiku Before Haiku presents 320 hokku composed between the thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the poems of the courtier Nijo Yoshimoto to those of the genre's first "professional" master, Sogi, and his disciples. It features 20 masterpieces by Basho himself. Steven D. Carter introduces the history of haiku and its aesthetics, classifying these poems according to style and context. His rich commentary and notes on composition and setting illuminate each work, and he provides brief biographies of the poets, the original Japanese text in romanized form, and earlier, classical poems to which some of the hokku allude.
For Nirvana by
For Nirvana features exceptional examples of the poet Cho Oh-Hyun's award-winning work. Cho Oh-Hyun was born in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, and has lived in retreat in the mountains since becoming a novice monk at the age of seven. Writing under the Buddhist name Musan, he has composed hundreds of poems in seclusion, many in the sijo style, a relatively fixed syllabic poetic form similar to Japanese haiku and tanka. For Nirvana contains 108 Zen sijo poems (108 representing the number of klesas, or "defilements," that one must overcome to attain enlightenment). These transfixing works play with traditional religious and metaphysical themes and include a number of "story" sijo, a longer, more personal style that is one of Cho Oh-Hyun's major innovations. Kwon Youngmin, a leading scholar of sijo, provides a contextualizing introduction, and in his afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl reflects on the unique challenges of translating the collection.
The Kim Van Kieu of Nguyen Du by
Nguyen Du was an exiled Vietnamese official. This epic poem is his most notable work from this period.