With this groundbreaking collection, translated and edited by the renowned poet and translator David Hinton, a new generation will be introduced to the work that riveted Ezra Pound and transformed modern poetry. The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton’s book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet's work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poeets. From the classic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on nature, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight. And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel remarkably fresh and contemporary, presenting a literature both radically new and entirely resonant.
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“In the way of the pioneer translators of Chinese poetry during the past century—of Arthur Waley, Burton Watson, Willis Barnstone—David Hinton has heard and lured into English a new manner of hearing the great poets of that long glory of China’s classical age. His achievement is another echo of the original, and a gift to our language.” —W. S. Merwin
“Hinton has established himself as the premier Chinese translator of our generation . . . He is a national treasure.” —William Mullen, The New York Sun
“I don’t know if [Hinton’s Selected Poems of Po Chü-i] is superior to the original or not, but it’s superior to anything I’ve ever seen in Chinese, and about the same for English.” —A. R. Ammons
“Hinton’s music is subtle, modulated . . . He has listened to the individual tone of each poet, and his craft is equal to his perception . . . He continues to enlarge our literary horizon.” —Rosemary Waldrop, citation for the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
“[The Late Poems of Meng Chiao] affords us what is all too rare in Chinese translations: the sustained, recognizable resonance of a single voice at a single moment . . . This is a real contribution to the small body of genuine poetic translation.” —Richard Howard
“Given the magnitude of his ability and his overall project, Hinton is creating nothing less than a new literary tradition in English, an event of truly major importance not only to English literature but also to the literature of my own language. I cannot recommend the value of his work too highly.”— Bei Dao
About the Author
David Hinton’s translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned him a Guggenheim fellowship, numerous NEA and NEH fellowships, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, from the PEN American Center. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the four seminal works of Chinese philosophy: the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, and Mencius. He lives in Vermont.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New Master, Old Masters,
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This review is from: Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (Hardcover)
This anthology is itself a work of American literature---not something that can be said with any degree of confidence of most such compilations. For many years now Hinton has been quietly and tenaciously amassing a body of translations of classical Chinese poetry that is provocatively different from the Poundian model (which tends to favour a style that is spare, pellucid, minimalist and---by definition---'Imagist').Hinton's versions, by contrast, are knotty, thoughtful, muscular and torsive. They are also intensely musical. They restore a measure of sheer passion and 'difficulty' to Chinese poems that, while it suits certain poets better than others, is always highly compelling. Hinton is steeped in Chinese philosophy (particularly Daoism) and this has led him to develop his own private 'philosophical' diction, which he uses pretty consistently throughout. We general readers sometimes forget how allusive Chinese poetry is, not just to Chinese history, astrology, medicine etc., but also to Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. My only (very minor) reservation about this admirable collection, is that his style is so distinctive that it might be thought to impose a degree of homogeneity on his chosen source texts; and that this could be seen as a little misleading. The same charge could of course be laid against Waley's translations, or Burton Watson's---or even Ezra Pound's. Nor, when one looks more closely at the text as a whole, does it seem quite fair: Hinton's Shi Jing poems are unlike anything he's ever done before, for instance; and his renderings of Li He are likewise noticeably different from those of Du Fu or Meng Jiao. By tackling so broad a span of Chinese literary history, Hinton has set himself a whole set of new problems to solve, and the result has been a triumphant success. What a treat to see him getting under the skins of so many other major Chinese writers, and giving them fresh voices! His decision to stop at the end of the Song Dynasty makes perfect sense, though I'd love one day to see what he makes of those many wonderful Yuan Dynasty qu poems that at present we have to go to Seaton for (not that Seaton isn't pretty wonderful himself). In recent years we've been highly fortunate in our American translators of both Chinese and Japanese verse: but Hinton really is in a class of his own. Buy this, and treasure it during your own lifetime; then pass it on to your children and grandchildren. Buy it in hardback, so that it will weather the decades. (But do so quickly. Hardback editions have relatively small print-runs. In fifty years' time, second-hand copies of this masterpiece will be worth a small fortune.)
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Falling in Love with Chinese Poetry,
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This review is from: Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (Paperback)
I bought this book as a reference, something to dip into from time to time, but once I opened it I was hooked. I read it cover to cover and will go back to it many more times. It is such a joy to read classical Chinese poetry translated by someone who is more interested in the poetry than the opportunity to show off his linguistic skills or his ability to turn 8th century Chinese into something that a fop in the 1820s would write. Hinton is the best translator of Chinese poetry I've ever come across. He really loves the work, and he lets you love it too.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
English Text Book for Elementary and HS,
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This review is from: Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (Paperback)
Parents should pick this book and read this book with their kids;Our government should mandate schools to educate our pupils with this book. I remember my own childhood as a Chinese kid, how my parents read me simple Tang poems, and wow! now Mr. David Hinton has done it for English speaking people and world and my idols too. His book holds great treasure for kids, after reading it they simple become educated, elegant and classy. and how often we call it a translation for all Chinese poetry anthology? and we again and again tell ourselves that poetry cannot be translated, but Mr. Hinton not only give us a translation, but the actual poems that my Chinese masters done, all in English. I stay in US try to learn English and hope one day I can translate Chinese poems into English, but after reading some of Hinton's work I burn my stack of translated works, coz I am happy there are a few awesome translators work the best as I can see. and one of best of Chinese poetry is across culture, it does not emphasize on religion, even a spiritual content that relates to humanism (inner), society(political), and nature all combines into one speech, and thru this translation it seems nothing is lost to me. and even though many readers miss many allusive terms such as evening sun, autumn for old age or nation's end, spring means love and romance and favor of emperor.... still you won't miss the motion pictures that each great artist has done for you, those directors don't need millions dollar to shoot a film, just a few characters and words to bring all the thoughts and emotion that echoes in your heart. And I bet most kids want to be a poet after reading it, coz they want to create movie with their words too. This book you cannot miss, it is for everyone. Now I can happily go back to my books and wine and my brocade qin and acoustic guitar to sing the autumn moon and spring bloom, under the setting sun beyond green mountains.
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