Publication Date: November 1, 2005 | Series: Lannan Translations Selection Series
This collection of 106 poems by 44 female Tang-era poets is the most comprehensive of its kind. Poets are organized based on their status in Tang dynasty society: women of the court, women of the household, courtesans and entertainers, and women of religion. While each poet’s concerns vary with their social status, common thematic threads include heartbreak and the mysteries of the natural world. Thumbnail biographies of each poet and notes regarding individual poems complete this important collection.
Jeanne Larsen has published poetry, three novels set in China, and a book of poetry translation, Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao. She teaches in the creative writing program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
Jeanne Larsen has published three novels set in China and has translations in many recent anthologies of traditional Chinese poetry. Her first book of poetry translation was Brocade River Poems: Selected Work of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao. She teaches in the creative writing program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
Jeanne Larsen fell in love with Chinese poetry when she was in high school. After earning her M.A. in creative writing from what was then Hollins College, she spent two years teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan. That not only locked in her love for Tang dynasty poets and the world they lived in, it convinced her that, right Mom, she'd better go get a Ph.D. A few years of Comparative Literature later (Iowa City, USA, & Nagasaki, Japan, mostly), Jeanne started teaching at Hollins, between Virginia's Blue Ridge and the Allegheny highlands, in the Roanoke valley: one of the best spots on the planet, so she says.
Jeanne's latest book is WHY WE MAKE GARDENS (& OTHER POEMS). She has also published the AWP Award winning (JAMES COOK IN SEARCH OF TERRA INCOGNITA: A BOOK OF POEMS), two collections of translated poems by women of the Tang era (BROCADE RIVER POEMS and WILLOW, WINE, MIRROR, MOON), a little lit crit, and the three novels in her "Avalokiteshvara trilogy", SILK ROAD, BRONZE MIRROR, and MANCHU PALACES. Essays, poetry, translations, and occasionally a short story all show up in literary magazines (some print, some digital), now and then. More books in the works, of course. Right now, she's mainly happy for the Authors Guild "back in print" program, which has made the novels easily available again: same inside, maps and all, with snappy new covers to boot.
This review is from: Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women's Poems from Tang China (Lannan Translations Selection Series) (Hardcover)
What Ms. Larsen began in "Brocade River Poems: Selected Work of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao" continues in this wonderful, slim and accessible volume. There is so much more to Tang Dynasty poetry then Li Po and Du Fu, as enjoyable as they are. Ms. Larsen's translations and exegesis of the poems of some of the female poets of the late Tang and Early Sung illustrate the humor, the depth' in fact the whole emotional range that poetry has the power to offer.
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