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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.11308
EAN: 9781556591952
ISBN: 1556591950
Label: Copper Canyon Press
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2003-09-01
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Studio: Copper Canyon Press

Poetry is China's greatest art, and for the past eight centuries Poems of the Masters has been that country's most studied and memorized collection of verse. For the first time ever in English, here is the complete text, with an introduction and extensive notes by renowned translator, Red Pine. Over one hundred poets are represented in this bilingual edition, including many of China's celebrated poets: Li Pai, Wang Wei, Tu Fu, Wang Po, and Ou-yang Hsiu.

Poems of the Masters was compiled during the Sung dynasty (9601278), a time when poetry became the defining measure of human relationships and understanding.

As Red Pine writes in his introduction: "Nothing was significant without a poem, no social or ritual occasion, no political or personal event was considered complete without a few well-chosen words that summarized the complexities of the Chinese vision of reality and linked that vision with the beat of their hearts . . . [Poetry's] greatest flowering was in the T'ang and Sung, when suddenly it was everywhere: in the palace, in the street, in every household, every inn, every monastery, in every village square."

"Chiupu River Song" by Li Pai

My white hair extends three miles
the sorrow of parting made it this long
who would guess to look in a mirror
where autumn frost comes from

Red Pine (the pen name of writer and independent scholar Bill Porter) is one of the world's most respected translators of Chinese literature, bringing into English several of China's central religious and literary texts: Taoteching, The Diamond Sutra, Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, and Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He lives near Seattle, Washington.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Thank you Red Pine
Review: I found the notes to the poems particularly valuable - thanks to them, the collection becomes a window into Chinese history and society.
I really miss an index by author, and, as usual, I am ill-at-ease with Red Pine's system of transliteration. It may seem superior to pinyin to the author, but it makes really hard to connect the places and people mentioned in this book to what one already knows to about Chinese history. It may be another case of the inferior system becoming the standard, but pinyin is the standard at this point, and fighting it is a bit quixotic at this point.
These are the things one notices when a book is good enough to read and spend time with, so do not let this put this off. In fact, I can't wait for more Red Pine translations.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Delight
Review: Those who have never read Red Pine's translations are in for a treat. Those who have read them will continue to enjoy the feast.

Beautiful graphically, the book and the poetry SING! Red Pine has a wonderful gift in transmitting wisdom and spirit with words that transport one to a higher plane of existence, even if only temporarily. Even when the reader returns, the impact still remains and the awareness of the depth of quality one's life can have, is not soon forgotten.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A gift from a master translator
Review: Another gift from Red Pine (Bill Porter) whose love for Chinese verse and the Dharma have shaped him into one of the foremost translators of the old poets. This Chinese classic has been around for eight centuries, but is here finally available in English! The volume offers 123 poets, 224 poems. Adjacent Chinese text and critical notes are provided for each poem. Included at the end are a timeline of the Dynasties from c. 2200 BCE to 1368, a complete index of the poets, and a complete index of the titles. This is a monumental work and an extraordinary gift from the translator. A typical verse from this collection, called In Reply, by a poet called The Ancient Recluse:

Somehow I ended up beneath pines
sleeping in comfort on boulders
there aren't any calendars in the mountains
winter ends but who counts the years

A sincere thank you to Red Pine and Copper Canyon Press for providing these treasures.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I checked it out of the library 3x - & bought my own copy
Review: Previous reviewers have already summarized the more obvious qualities of this book; I agree with their comments. I found that for the student of Chinese culture, Chinese education, or Chinese thought, the book is a stunning introduction to a way of expressing observations and meaning in compact forms. In particular, the poetry seems both denser and more graceful than similar forms in English poetry, and more complex than the haiku forms descended from it. Chinese speakers I know vouched for the sensitive transliteration.

Basho advised a haiku student to "read Chinese poetry" to write better haiku. I came to this work after struggling with haiku for a long time. I found Basho's advice to be good and this book to be a remarkable way to begin. The historical text snippets offered with the poems make further reflection easy without attempting to "define" all that the poem means.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A splendid translation and collection of poems
Review: Red Pine (Bill Porter) has beautifully translated this important collection of Chinese verse. His commentaries, too, are well worth reading.

This book would be an excellent text for those who wish to learn to read T'ang and Sung poetry, and classical literary Chinese in general. The Chinese and English poems are presented on facing pages. Each poem is sufficiently brief to allow students the opportunity to (begin to) learn a complete work of literature without the intimidation that can accompany larger texts -- and there are 224 such poems in this translation, which gives ample scope for learning in nice, easy steps. (Of course this will have to be done using a dictionary like Mathews', and the student will need some familiarity with looking characters up by radical -- this is not a teaching text with a glossary and explanatory notes about language usage.)

Even if one does not desire to use this collection to learn Chinese, the English translations are certainly beautiful poems in their own right, and are worth spending time with. And meanwhile, the Chinese texts are always there, extending a gentle invitation to the curious.

Surely every lover of Chinese (and English!) poetry will treasure this book.

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