Du Fu: A Life in Poetry (Paperback)

~ Du Fu (Author), David Young (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not a biography, but instead a very coherent book of free translations, this new volume translated by Young (Black Lab) gives the sense of a life as lived, a life that belongs at once to Du Fu (712–770, also called Tu Fu) and to any sympathetic reader who has experienced beauty in nature, disillusion in politics, or love and trouble at home. These 168 poems, along with clear footnotes, also create a sense of the poets own times. Du Fu began his poetic career as a bachelor writing beautiful seasonal poetry, a close friend of the great, and slightly older, poet Li Bai (Li Po). Autumn again and you and I/ are thistledown in the wind, he told his friend in one early poem. But Du Fu married and began a family, and then, seeking noble patrons, had to travel through war zones. He wrote, in consequence, poems about conscription, battle, poverty and loneliness: on my face new tears/ are running down familiar tracks. Search for secure employment later on brought him to far-flung provincial towns, where he produced his most tranquil verse: here comes some tea and sugarcane juice/ brought down from the house. (Nov.)
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Product Description

Du Fu (712–770) is one of the undisputed geniuses of Chinese poetry—still universally admired and read thirteen centuries after his death. Now David Young, author of Black Lab, and well known as a translator of Chinese poets, gives us a sparkling new translation of Du Fu’s verse, arranged to give us a tour of the life, each “chapter” of poems preceded by an introductory paragraph that situates us in place, time, and circumstance. What emerges is a portrait of a modest yet great artist, an ordinary man moving and adjusting as he must in troubled times, while creating a startling, timeless body of work.

Du Fu wrote poems that engaged his contemporaries and widened the path of the lyric poet. As his society—one of the world’s great civilizations—slipped from a golden age into chaos, he wrote of the uncertain course of empire, the misfortunes and pleasures of his own family, the hard lives of ordinary people, the changing seasons, and the lives of creatures who shared his environment. As the poet chases chickens around the yard, observes tear streaks on his wife’s cheek, or receives a gift of some shallots from a neighbor, Young’s rendering brings Du Fu’s voice naturally and elegantly to life.

I sing what comes to me
in ways both old and modern

my only audience right now—
nearby bushes and trees

elegant houses stand
in an elegant row, too many

if my heart turns to ashes
then that’s all right with me . . .

from “Meandering River”

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375711600
• ISBN-13: 978-0375711602
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #367,202 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First reading of Du Fu, in any language., March 20, 2009

By	Julie M. Vognar "Julie" (Berkeley, California United States) - See all my reviews

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It is most of a life in poetry--and occasionally, pictures from that life that are startling, both for their strangeness and their familiarity. How much do we know of the the private feelings of a man from 8th century China? David Young ties the story together, with his translation, and his references to people, places, times, and the translators who have gone before him. (All my comments around the three poems are either his, or inspired by his).


Du Fu has already failed the Imperial exam, already met Li Bai, whose poetry he loves, and thinks, but restlessly, of becoming a hermit-poet. At thirty, he looks at a painting--with the eyes of a young man(how many old Chinese paintings can we see today with "white" silk? How many--fragments-- that anyone could have seen in 742?):

Memorable portrait
of a falcon

the white silk
gives off wind and frost

is he watching fiercely
for a rabbit?

angry foreigner
he looks at me askance

he has a chain and ring
ready to unfasten

I could almost
take him off his perch

send him out to find
some of those little larks

scatter blood and feathers
on the prairie.

*

Five years before the An-Lushan rebellion (755), the border fighting which--partly-- inspired it was already underway:

...tax gatherers go back and forth
but where will the taxes come from?

it makes us question whether
there's any sense in having sons

daughters can marry neighbors
boys seem born to die in foreign weeds

have you seen how the bones from the past
lie bleached and uncollected near Black Lake?

the new ghosts moan, the old ghosts moan--
we hear them at night, hear them in the rain.

*

Trapped, as a loyalist in the capital at Chang'an (756-58) Du Fu writes a poem for his wife---perhaps the first to show romantic attachment to a wife--most expressions of affection were written to male companions and courtesans:

Tonight
in this same moonlight

my wife is alone at her window
in Fuzhou

I can hardly bear
to think of my children

too young to understand
why I can't come to them

her hair
must be damp from the mist

her arms
cold jade in the moonlight

when will we stand together
by those slack curtains

while the moonlight dries
the tear-streaks on our faces?

*

There is poverty, pride of brief ownership, the joys of reading and writing poetry, old age (which seems to begin at about 40!), and many other facets of his life here. I don't know why I chose these three...

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Du Fu Translation, March 14, 2009

By	Louis Petrillo (West Haven, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been reading translations of Du Fu's poetry since my undergraduate days when I bought a copy of _ The White Pony _ at my college's bookstore. Since then I've read innumerable translations: Kenneth Rexroth, Burton Watson, William Hinton, Sam Hamill, Red Pine, and who knows how many others. This is the finest of the lot since Rexroth. Already I plan to use one of the poems for a eulogy of a dear friend who's very ill. My only complaint is that he doesn't include the Chinese originals.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars China's greatest poet lived through history's greatest collapse, September 8, 2009

By	Max Kummerow (seattle) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In 754 China had a very wet, cold year and much of the grain rotted in the fields. In 755 a general in charge of northeast China rebelled against the emperor who had been preoccupied with his mistress and not paying enough attention to administration. A year later the emperor's troops made him watch as the concubine was strangled. The census before the rebellion counted 53 million Chinese. Ten years later after the rebellion was put down, the next census counted 17 million. If these numbers are right, 36 million people, two out of three Chinese, did not survive, probably the worst collapse of a human society in history in terms of numbers and percentage. Some of Du Fu's poems give us a window to what it was like to live through such an appalling disaster.

In a long life in poetry, Du Fu captured many emotions and scenes--friendship, happy alcohol drinking, family life, nature, social injustice, political maneuvering. Du Fu saw and wrote it all down with economical language that captured the essence of his world. Translating Chinese poetry presents a huge challenge--the quality of the result has a lot to do with the translator. A little book called "15 translations of a poem by Wang Wei" (another Tang Dynasty poet) shows how the Chinese use of allusions and metaphor allow many different English versions, some more poetic, reflecting the poetic abilities, depth of knowledge and biases of the translator. Gary Snyder and Burton Watson are my favorite translators. But this book is pretty good. These English poems kind of get the job done, rendering the meaning with some grace and beauty and the openness to interpretation where a great poet allows us to draw our own meaning from the elusive words.