I am going to have to reread this, before passing comment.

The strength of the poems shines through

The translations seem dated, but one can still sense the greatness of the poetry. The commentaries are useful and excellent. The background the the poets is good too.

New to Tang poetry? Get this book--it includes a wonderful little selection of Du Fu's and Li Bai's [Li Po's] poems but the real reason to get hold of a copy is its excellent introduction to understanding Tang poetry. The inclusion of the original Chinese and in particular, one full-length Chinese poem that is dissected character-by-character to help explain the richness (and difficulty in translating) Chinese poems into European languages makes this little book invaluable to anyone who wants to learn how to read and extract the full meanings of Tang poetry.

The introduction covers a brief history of Chinese poetry and the various rhyme schemes used. Select poems have their full Chinese text on a side page; other poems include extremely helpful notes explaining some of the more difficult passages or allusions. (An example: "Whitestar Fell' translates the name of T'ai-po Mountain on the borders of [the Chinese states of] Ch'in and Shu; in which T'ai-po means 'very white' but is also the name of the planet Venus...." (p. 131)

The Chinese text is transcribed in the older Wade-Giles romanization which may cause some difficulties but there are easily downloadable WG-Pinyin translation charts available on the internet for those who haven't yet familiarized themselves with the two systems. Not sure if this book is still in print or not but there are lots of used copies readily found in campus bookshops and online. If you're a newcomer to Tang poetry, don't delay in finding a copy.

Good deal of notes and background information by the translator to try and convey the depth of the poems. Not only the English language can't possibly be as vivid as the Chinese, but basically all of the poems refer to a great deal of contemporary events and the translator does a stellar job of providing those details.

Not sure if i have ever read any of Chinese literature before, which feels quite ignorant.
I get that translations to english in this case turn poems into distand shadows of original, but i still had plenty enjoyable moments. For anyone wanting to go deeper, more than half of the book contains explanations giving historical, cultural and all other contexts. I skipped quite some as with no even basic knowledge they more confuse than explain. But again, that’s a faulf of my ignorance. The book is good and I like Li Po better.

With wine I sit
absent to Night,
till (Fallen petals
in folds of my gown)

I stagger up
to stalk the brook’s moon:
The birds are gone
and people are few!

Communications from aliens

Of all the arts, poetry is the one most tied to specific languages. This is why you will hear French speakers claiming that there is no such thing as English poetry -- English poetry is a different art from French poetry, so it's easy for a connoisseur of French poetry to dismiss English poetry. This question is especially pressing when a native English speaker (me) wants to read the poetry of two famous Chinese poets, Li Po and Tu Fu, who flourished in eighth-century China. (Don't be confused if you see their names written differently. Li Po, for instance, is also called Li Bai and Li Bo.) Chinese is a very different language from English, far more so than English is from French, and because Chinese is a living language, we can be confident that the Chinese of Li Po and Tu Fu was rather different from modern Chinese. If you have ever struggled to understand Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English, you will appreciate this.

Translator Arthur Cooper undertakes the challenging job of bringing Li Po and Tu Fu to life for Modern English readers. He is fully aware of the difficulty. The book begins with 101 pages of front matter. Most of that is an 86-page introduction in which Cooper discusses the Culture of Tang China and Li Po and Tu Fu's place in it. He also, at considerable (and, it must be admitted, tedious) length discusses Chinese Poetic Prosody and how he rendered it in English. He ends with an admonition to read the poems aloud, and instructions on how to do so. Poets always tell you to read aloud, and I usually ignore them, but this time I did it. Every morning for a month and a half I read one poem aloud.

Li Po and Tu Fu were not only contemporaries -- they were friends and admirers of each other's work. They are, however, very different. Li Po's poems are often about drinking and idling -- he clearly had the ability to laugh at the world, including himself. Tu Fu's poetry is more serious. I found Tu Fu easier to understand, but the words that will stick with me are Li Po's. I definitely had the feeling that Cooper loves Tu Fu a bit more, although I'm sure he would claim that he loves all his children equally.

Cooper accompanies each poem with notes describing the circumstances under which they were written. These are especially useful in the case of Tu Fu's poems, which often relate to his career and to the historical upheavals of the time. Li Po's poems are more common and more universal.

Like most Penguin Classics collections, this is a well-constructed book.

Blog review.

turned me on to chinese poetry. the descriptions between the poems can be extremely informative for developing context, but are occasionally problematic. obviously there is only so much I can glean from poetry that is dependent on history and references outside of my knowledge base, but this is an excellent primer for the history of the Tang Dynasty and the lives lived in it.

NIGHT THOUGHTS AFLOAT

By bent grasses
in a gentle wind
Under straight mast
I'm alone tonight,

And the stars hang
above the broad plain
But moon's afloat
in this Great River:

Oh, where's my name
among the poets?
Official rank?
'retired for ill-health.'

Drifting, drifting,
what am I more than
A single gull
between sky and earth?

---Du Fu

QUIET NIGHT THOUGHTS

Before my bed
there is bright moonlight
So that it seems
like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head
I watch the bright moon,
Lowering my head
I dream that I'm home.

---Li Bai

In Tang poetry, the solution to these quiet, restrained sadnesses is always, wonderfully, drinking...

ABANDON

With wine I sit
absent to Night, till
(Fallen petals
in folds of my gown)

I stagger up
to stalk the brook's moon:
The birds are gone
and people are few!

---Li Bai

In his long, luxurious introduction Arthur Cooper notes that drunkenness was viewed benevolently in Classical and Early Modern Chinese poetry, and even as attuning the body perfectly to divine revelation (much like in Ancient Greek thinking); which makes this Du Fu poem even sadder...

FROM A HEIGHT

The winds cut, clouds are high,
apes wail their sorrows,
The ait is fresh, sand white,
birds fly in circles;

On all sides fallen leaves
go rustling, rustling,
While ceaseless river waves
come rippling, rippling:

Autumn's each faded mile
seems like my journey
To mount, alone and ill,
to this balcony;

Life's failures and regrets
frosting my temples,
And wretched that I've had
to give up drinking.

好極了

I got a crash course in Chinese literature and poetry by reading Cao Xueqin "Story of the Stone". I was introduced to a variety of Chinese poets, operas, philosophy, and religious texts by way of reference when various characters in that novel discussed literature or were creating their own poetry. I was amazed at how many references there were to the Tang dynasty, a veritable Chinese golden age. This book is a nice primer on Tang dynasty poetry in general and these two poets specifically. I have to admit I was most taken with the author's inclusion of a poem written in 1956 by Chairman Mao Zedong called "Farewell to the God of Plagues" written to celebrate the annihilation of a certain waterborne parasite formally found in the Yangtze river. I wonder if Nixon wrote any good poetry?

Actually I didn't rate the classic poems from considered two Chinese greatest poets. I rated the translation project. I like the 100+ pages introductions before the book showed the first poem. And even then, on poems themselves, the translator added some short descriptions too. I think the lengthy introductions is appropriate for introductory purpose of the poets. Please remember that this book published for the first time on pre-internet era.

There are only 100+ poems on this book, far from complete collections, even counting the surviving texts only.

Li Bai: the drunkard of Tang poetry

Du Fu: great odes to history and wars and mankind