Customer Reviews

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China

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this collection is an excellent introduction for people who get turned on by the idea of monks living in the mountains, writing poetry, sleeping, drinking wine, writing poetry, sleeping, drinking wine et al. i highly recommend it to people who love buddhism, poetry, or chinese culture. the added bonus is the chinese text. i've been so impressed with anything associated with bill porter a.k.a. red pine that i've bought all of his translations. the translations included here are better and in many cases vastly superior to anything else out there.

Red Pine, Mike O'Connor, and four other translators have opened for us the world of the literary descendants of Han-Shan, poet monks who are most at home in misty hills, wandering with the rivers, enjoying tea over a fire of leaves. Like Japanese haiku, Chinese Zen poetry evokes imagination and layers of depth with the sparest of poetic structures. The poets' Buddhism is not put on show or even obvious; it quietly underlies their love of nature, their deep connectedness, their insight into the human experience of being alive.

A ten page introduction by Andrew Schelling provides the historical, cultural, religious, and philosophical backdrops for these poets. Then you let your imagine meander through the poems of Chia Tao (779-843), Chi-chi (864-937), The Nine Monks and Chih Yuan (late 10th century), Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623), Shih-shu (late 17th century) and Ching An (1851-1912). Each section is comprised of an introduction to the poet and his context, the poems, and helpful notes. I appreciate the very helpful Index of First Lines provided at the end of the book, as well as the information about the contributors.

Wisdom Publications has done it again: another lovely book that brings out the best in an Eastern tradition. The tradition this time is the poetry of Chinese Buddhist monks, and in this volume there are a number of moving and sublime examples of their craft. The poems are presented with visual elegance and an unobtrusive scholarship that makes the volume even more noteworthy. My only objection stems from the organization of the book, wherein six different contributors each choose a poet or group of poets to translate and present. I am not knowledgable enough to know whether it is the fault of the original poets or that of the translators, but the poems in one section really fall flat, and another section is also somewhat below the high state of excellence achieved by the others. But really, this is a minor complaint. The vast majority of these poems will appeal greatly to those who are attracted to this sort of poetry, and the volume over all is very pleasing.

This book represents the not-so-usual suspects in the genre of buddhist poetry. precise, yet delicate images, dynamic voices, translators who practice the way, this combination results not merely in translated verses, they are verses translating lives, works of art, acts of reverence.

Middling collection of Chinese Buddhist poems; I didn't feel that there were any hidden gems here, not on the level of Han Shan.

The original Chinese text accompanies the translations, however, which is something that I find pleasing, and presumably you will too, if you are into the language.