The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

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 pageâ‚¬â€¢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.
Country USA
Brand New Directions
Manufacturer New Directions
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780811216180
ReleaseDate 2006-06-28
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780811216180

Country	USA
Brand	New Directions
Manufacturer	New Directions
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780811216180
ReleaseDate	2006-06-28
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780811216180

The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

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