Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o [Paperback]

Su Tung-P'o (Author), Burton Watson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1993

tr Burton Watson, from 11th century Chinese

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Chinese is a daunting language to translate, but this new selection of poems by the leading poet of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) is in safe hands: Watson ( From the Country of Eight Islands ), a prize-winning translator of numerous volumes of Chinese and Japanese poetry, has translated and compiled an extraordinary book of poems. Su Tung-p'o was a civil servant who traveled to numerous political posts throughout the state. Hence, much of his poetry is a catalogue of his travels--their diverse landscapes, inhabitants, songs and folklore. With his lyrical precision and astonishing eye for detail, Su Tung-p'o renders the Chinese countryside with a vivid particularity: "Purple plums, yellow melons--the village roads smell sweet; / Black gauze cap, white hemp robe--traveling clothes are cool." Less aesthetically rigid than earlier Chinese poets, he sought inspiration both in issues of philosophical complexity and matters of everyday life. This expansiveness, combined with a sophisticated sense of image and metaphor, created a body of work that is strikingly modern. Or, in Su Tung-p'o's own words: "We're like a rabbit darting from preying hawks . . . lightning glimpsed through a crack."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Above The River, Heavy On The Heart (1088)
Along The Road To Stone Lake (1078)
At Twilight, Fine Rain Was Still Falling
Beginning Of Autumn: A Poem To Send To Tzu-yu (1083)
Bell And Drum On The South River Bank (1101)
Black Clouds -- Spilled Ink (1072)
Black Muzzle
Bright Moon, When Did You Appear?
By The River At T'eng-chou, Betting Up At Night (1100)
Children
Climbing Cloud Dragon Mountain (1078)
Creek Crisscrosses The Meadow (1087)
Days Of Rain; The Rivers Have Overflowed: 1
Days Of Rain; The Rivers Have Overflowed: 2
Describing Water Wheels On The Road To Wu-hsi (1074)
Dipping Water From The River And Simmering Tea (1100)
Drank Tonight At Eastern Slope (1082)
Drinking At The Lake; It Was Clear At First But Later (1073)
Drinking Wine (1092)
Eastern Slope
Eastern Slope
Eating Lichees, The 2nd Poem Of Two With Introduction (1096)
Evening View From Sea Watch Tower (1072)
The Fa-hui Temple's Pavilion Of Horizontal Green (1073)
Feet Stuck Out, Singing Wildly (1094)
First Prose Poem On The Red Cliff (1082)
Following The Rhymes Of Yang Pao's Early Spring
For Fu Yao-yu's Grass Hall At Chi-yuan
Grasses Bury The River Bank (1072)
Half-sober, Half-drunk (1098)
Held Up By Head Winds On The Tz'u-hu-chia (1094)
Held Up Two Days At Gold Mountain (1079)
Hsin-ch'ou Eleventh Month, Nineteenth Day
A Hunded Days, Free To Go (1080)
Hundred Pace Rapids (1078)
Husband-watching Height
I Only Hear A Bell Beyond The Mist
I Thought I'd End My Days In A Hainan Village (1100)
I Travel Day And Night
I'm A Frightened Monkey Who's Reached The Forest (1095)
In The Rain Visiting The Temple Of The Compassionate Goddess
It Snowed In South Valley
Lament Of The Farm Wife Of Wu
Letting The Writing Brush Go Where It Will (1099)
Lodging At Hai-hui Temple (1073)
Long Ago I Lived In The Country (1093)
Lotus Viewing
Mid-autumn Moon (1078)
Mirage At Sea (1085)
Mountain Village (1073)
New Year's Eve (1071)
New Year's Eve (1084)
The New Year's Eve Blizzard
New Year's Eve: Spending The Night Outside Ch'ang-chou City
On A Boat, Awake At Night (1079)
On First Arriving At Huang-chou (1080)
On The Road To Hsin-ch'eng
On The Yangtze Watching The Hills
Overgrown Garden Deserted In Fall (1074)
Painting Of A Wild Goose By The Scholar In Retirement (1084)
A Pair Of Rocks, With Introduction (1092)
Pear Blossoms By The Eastern Palisade (1077)
Presented To Abbot Ch'ang-tsung Of The East Forest Temple
Presented To Liu Ching-wen (1090)
Reading The Poetry Of Meng Chiao
Rhyming With Tzu-yu's At Mien-ch'ih, Recalling The Past
Rhyming With Tzu-yu's Silkworm Fair
Rhyming With Tzu-yu's 'treading The Green'
Roadside Flowers, Three Poems With Introduction (1073)
Second Prose Poem On The Red Cliff (1082)
Seeing The Year Out
Setting Off Early On The Huai River (1092)
Seven Thousand Miles Away (1094)
Song Of The Stone Drums
South Hall (1083)
Spring Night
The Statue Of Vimalakirti, A Clay Figure By Hang Hui-chih
Ten Days Of Spring Cold Kept Me Indoors (1081)
Ten Years - Dead And Living Dim And Draw Apart
Three Delights In My Place Of Exile (1097)
Three Hundred Tiers Of Green Hills (1084)
To The Tune Of Partridge Sky
Traveling At Night And Looking At The Stars
Under The Heaven Of Our Holy Ruler
Viewing Peonies At The Temple Of Good Fortune (1072)
Visiting Gold Mountain Temple
Visiting The Monastery Of The Patriarch's Pagoda While Ill
Visiting Yung-lo Temple I Learn That The Old Priest Wen Died
When Yu-k'o Painted Bamboo (1087)
White Crane Hill (1097)
Who Days A Painting Must Look Like Life? (1087)
Wild Birds On The Roof Call Insistently (1073)
Winter Solstice
Written For Master Chan's Room At The Double Bamboo Temple
Written On Abbot Lun's Wall At Mount Chiao (1074)
Written On The Wall At West Forest Temple (1084)
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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Product Details

• Paperback: 145 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (February 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556590644
• ISBN-13: 978-1556590641
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #416,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Chinese

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility., June 19, 2001

By 

tepi "tepi" - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o (Paperback)

SELECTED POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O : Translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson. 148 pp. Port Townsend, WA : Copper Canyon Press, 1994. ISBN 1-55659-064-4 (pbk.)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden the text with extraneous matter. His many translations from Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth having as they are books one often wants to returns to.

The present book, after a typically brief but interesting and informative introduction which provides all we really need before diving into the poems, gives us translations of 105 of Su Tung-p'o's poems, lightly annotated and beautifully printed on spacious pages.

Su Tung-p'o is one of China's greatest poets, and Watson has outdone himself here. The wrapper includes a highly laudatory appreciation by Gary Snyder, and it's easy to see why. Watson has always been a brilliant translator, and a true artist with words, but in this book he has lifted himself into the ranks of the very best, and has produced translations indistinguishable in quality from those of Snyder himself.

Here, as an example of his marvelous control of tone, thought, feeling, image, rhythm, and sound, are the opening lines of poem 52 (with my obliques added to indicate line breaks) - 'Reading the Poetry of Meng Chiao' :

"Night : reading Meng Chiao's poems, / characters fine as cow's hair. / By the cold lamp, my eyes blur and swim. / Good passages I rarely find - / lone flowers poking up from the mud - / But more hard words than the Odes or Li Sao - / jumbled rocks clogging the clear stream, / making rapids too swift for poling. / My first impression is of eating little fishes. . . . " (p.70).

What we find here is what Burton Watson, in his 'Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry' (1984), has described as "a freshness and immediacy that is often quite miraculous" (p.3).

Not poems about airy notions and exalted abstractions, then, but poems describing events from daily life, poems recording the scenes of a journey, poems expressing grief, joy, boredom, or irritation as here, poems both serious and funny and by someone who is in many ways like ourselves.

Su Tung-p'o's is a wholesome poetry, a poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility, and that translates us from the technoid madness of our own chaotic world to something more human and hence more nourishing. There's real food for the spirit in these poems. Watson has done them full justice. Sensitive readers would be unwise to pass them by.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Continues to speak after 1000 years, January 29, 2006

By 

John Pedersen (Eden Prairie, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o (Paperback)

The amazing thing about Su Tung-p'o is how modern he feels. Part of this is the translation by Burton Watson, but most of it is a reminder that the human condition has not changed a lot in 1000 years. We still miss our friends, marvel at the beauty of nature, feel the bittersweet loneliness of travel, and live in special moments. An excellent collection.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The poems of Su Tung-P'o, July 14, 2007

By 

Jan Hutchison (Christchurch, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o (Paperback)

Burton Watson, recognised as one of the finest translators of our time, gives us a selection of poems by an illustrious Chinese poet who lived in the 11th century. Many of the poems refer to Su Tung-P'o's travels as a government official in China. The poems are remarkable for their descriptions of the landscape and for their clear, concrete detail. The poet often has a light, playful touch. The poems reveal Su Tung-P'o as a compassionate man who, even though he suffered hardship, had a cheerful temperament. He asks questions still relevant to us all. There are poems that are warm and tender - others that reveal the influence of Taoism - and others such as "Dipping water from the river and simmering tea" that are artistic and touching. Jan Hutchison.