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Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o Paperback – February 1, 1993

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

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Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o

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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: 6.1 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #651,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #65 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > Asian > Chinese
- #165 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Asian > Chinese

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A poetry that cleanses and refreshes the sensibility.

By tepi on June 19, 2001

Format: 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.Read more ›

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Continues to speak after 1000 years

By John Pedersen on January 29, 2006

Format: 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.

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The poems of Su Tung-P'o

By Jan Hutchison on July 14, 2007

Format: 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.

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A Superb Selection of Su Tung-p'o

By Crazy Fox on April 2, 2007

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

This is a fine little volume of poetry by Su Tung-p'o, one of the great poets of Sung Dynasty China, translated with the usual virtuosity by Burton Watson. As usual, too, Watson knows how to be scholarly without being pedantic: his introduction is appropriately brief and to the point, outlining the poet's life and his poetics nicely and so giving readers enough background information without delaying them too much from the wonderful poems that follow. In the same way, enough footnotes are included to clarify and contextualize without overburdening the poems with a morass of prose.

Su has sort of helped Watson out on this, though, because his poems are for the most part very straightforward and accessible, appealing directly to our sensibilities. There is nothing so very convoluted or obscure about them that would require lots of annotation (in contrast, say, to poetry like that of Li He (as seen in Goddesses, Ghosts and Demons (Poetica)). This is not to say that Su's poems are shallow or simplistic. Far from it. They include within themselves depths and depths of feeling and insight by someone who was clearly moved by the world around him, someone who had seen his shares of life's ups and downs, someone who as a layperson practiced Buddhist meditation and fine-tuned his spirit thereby but who was far from adverse from inspiring himself with spirits of a more liquid nature. Indeed, the poems give every impression that this poet would've been a great guy to hang out with, perched somewhere on the ridge of some mountain temple, looking out over the landscape, sharing a few bottles of wine and a good laugh. In a way, the poems themselves travel over the centuries and give the reader just such an experience.

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A Great Translation of Great Chinese Poetry

By appreciator of art on May 17, 2014

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

i really liked these poems of Su Tung-P'o. Most are nature poems but a few are written about relationships. These poems are very accessible. The images in them are very sharp and quite lyrical. i think Burton Watson did a great job of translating these poems.

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