The Selected Poems of Wang Wei [Paperback]

Wang Wei (Author), David Hinton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 2006

David Hinton, whose much-acclaimed translations of Li Po and Tu Fu have become classics, now completes the triumvirate of China's greatest poets with The Selected Poems of Wang Wei.

Wang Wei (701-761 C.E.) is often spoken of, with his contemporaries Li Po and Tu Fu, as one of the three greatest poets in China's 3,000-year poetic tradition. Of the three, Wang was the consummate master of the short imagistic landscape poem that came to typify classical Chinese poetry. He developed a nature poetry of resounding tranquility wherein deep understanding goes far beyond the words on the page—a poetics that can be traced to his assiduous practice of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. But in spite of this philosophical depth, Wang is not a difficult poet. Indeed, he may be the most immediately appealing of China's great poets, and in Hinton's masterful translations he sounds utterly contemporary. Many of his best poems are incredibly concise, composed of only twenty words, and they often turn on the tiniest details: a bird's cry, a splinter of light on moss, an egret's wingbeat. Such imagistic clarity is not surprising since Wang was also one of China's greatest landscape painters. This is a breathtaking poetry, one that in true Zen fashion renders the ten thousand things of this world in such a way that they empty the self even as they shimmer with the clarity of their own self-sufficient identity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A member of the intellectual class and a government official by profession, Wang Wei (A.D. 701– 761) became one of China's greatest classical poets and painters, alongside Li Po and Tu Fu (both of whom Hinton has also translated). This selection arranges in roughly chronological order 80 short poems (only a few are longer than a page). Characterized by Zen-like calm, acceptance of the changing world and careful observation of nature, these poems make big, though quiet, cognitive jumps and move with a stirring inevitability. Setting the poems in neat couplets, Hinton's fluid translation renders, with an ease befitting the poems' themes, meditations on old age ("No one's ever changed white hair back:/ might as well try conjuring yellow gold"), observations on the rhythms of agricultural life ("It's the farming season. No idleness now:/ families pour out to work southern fields") and metaphysical ruminations ("My dear friend nowhere in sight,/ this Han River keeps flowing east.// Now, if I look for old masters here,/ I find empty rivers and mountains"). This book is full of subtle delights. (June 28)
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Review

This book is full of subtle delights. -- Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (June 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216187
• ISBN-13: 978-0811216180
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #652,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A sad case of over-egging, May 9, 2007

By 

Sponge (Somerset, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Selected Poems of Wang Wei (Paperback)

Nobody can dispute the translator's knowledge of Chinese; it's the English that is bizarre. Hinton tends to
translate everything, especially titles, e.g most translators leave Huazi Ridge at that, but H. has "Master-Flourish Ridge." Cf also "At Azure-Dragon Monastery for Monk-Cloud Wall's Courtyard Assembly", "Apricot-Grain Cottage." This verges on the quaint - Chinoiserie. H. tends towards clipped English, but it doesn't match, as I imagine it's intended to, Chinese economy of language, but again a kind of orientalism intrudes, especially when religion comes into question, e.g. "Grasses cushion legs sitting ch'an stillness/up here...Inhabiting emptiness beyond dharma cloud,...("Climbing to Subtle-Aware Monastery"). There are uneasy echoes of Pound and 60s zen freaks. Occasionally, H. is cute:"Dear stone, little platter alongside cascading streamwater..." ("Playfully Written on a Flat Stone"). H. can be mannered, too. Lotus blossoms adrift out across treetops/flaunt crimson calyces among mountains." ("Magnolia Slope"). I'm afraid even H. falls into the trap of all too many English translators of Chinese poetry:they put on their singing robes and start writing English verse.

Christopher Busby

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice Translations of a Poetic Master, November 8, 2008

By 

Kurt (North Carolina, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Selected Poems of Wang Wei (Paperback)

Hinton has done a fine job translating some of Wang Wei's more famous works in this book. If you appreciate translations from folks like Watson, Seaton, and Rexroth, then you will like what he has done here. There is a nice introduction to the life of Wang Wei (not too long-winded, just right), and the notes following the poems are clear and concise. This is a nice work to add to any collection of poetry.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep and beautiful poetry in beautiful English, September 25, 2010

By 

cincosauces - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Selected Poems of Wang Wei (Paperback)

I do not read Chinese, either ancient or modern, so I cannot compare or evaluate the quality of the translation. Anyway I found the English versions of these poems really beautiful and feel that the translator has succeed in conveying their essence. Having read other translations by Hinton this does not come as a surprise.
As for the poems themselves, I find them incredibly beautiful, with a subtle and deep wisdom lying behind the superficial simplicity. In this sense I put the poetry by Wang Wei in the same glorious category as that of T'ao Ch'ien. Both shine through the centuries like a guiding star.