Man's woke up one morning and was like, I really feel like translating some poems today, and busted this thing out.
But in all seriousness, reading through these poems slowly (which was difficult to do since there aren't that many) was so helpful in balancing out an overload of math classes. 10/10 recommend as supplementary reading to any upper-level math course. Your brain will have a nice rejuvenating rest. (Also, this book serves as a great introduction to the poets of this period and as a catalyst to delving deeper into their works.)

This re-iinspired a love of poetry in me. I cannot praise these poets too hightly!

I sit with my wine jar
among flowers
blossoming trees

no one to drink with

well, there's the moon
-Li Po

CONVERSATION AMONG MOUNTAINS

You ask why I live
in these green mountains

I smile
can't answer

I am completely at peace

a peach blossom
sails past
on the current

there are worlds
beyond this one

Li Po

The ancient Chinese poets really knew something...Li Po was the best one of them all.

Lovely poems, but I don't know that they qualify as translations. Taken on their own terms, it's well worth reading, but as translations, they're quite dissatisfying.

In the introduction, Young offers a confusing, unconvincing defense: "the absence in Chinese of all that connective tissue of articles and prepositions makes the original grid airy and light, while its twin in English becomes musclebound and solemn." Why assume it's airy in the original? Why would it produce a distinctive effect of lightness using a grammatical characteristic that applies to every expression in the language? This is the translator's projection: only in contrast to his native English need the original appear that way.

Even assuming the premise is right, here's his solution: "to admit an English line is a different kind of unit and to treat the Chinese line like a stanza, breaking it up into smaller units of two or three lines." A poem is still a concrete object: its visual form is part of its content and its effect, and its rhythm is arguably as integral as its content. True, slavish imitation of the original form won't reproduce the original effect. But Young does not solve the problem by forcing the original's tight, compact, uniform lines into separate stanzas of an arbitrary number of lines. Adding lines, adding words, adding stanzas, and adding arbitrariness does not restore airiness and lightness.

Consider an example. Here's a fairly literal translation of Li Po's "Autumn Air":

The autumn wind is clear.
The autumn moon is bright.
The fall leaves gather and scatter.
A raven perches, then suddenly takes off again.
We think of each other, will we ever see each other again?
This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.

The characters per line repeat and grow: 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7. The structure emphasizes the development of the poem's theme from simple sadness to longing, then stubborn endurance, as well the development of its point of view from detached description to emotionally laden metaphors of seasonal cycles, making more striking the sudden shift to emotional coldness and stasis. That effect isn't achieved only by the increasing length and pace of the lines, but the contrast to the internal uniformity of the pairs. In English, this might look like:

clear fall wind,
bright fall moon.
autumn leaves gather, then scatter.
a raven perches, but breaks away.
we think of each other: will we meet again?
the hour grows longer, my heart grows harder.

Young's version is just not the same poem by any measure: not the same mood, not the same music, not the same effect, not the same content even:

Clean fall wind
clear fall moon

leaves heaped by the wind
leaves scattered

a cold raven
flaps slowly
from his roost

thoughts of you
fill my head

will I ever
see you again?

the ache
around my heart
gets bigger

Let's leave aside the tedious long-windedness. (Imagine being Li Po in the moment of the poem. Doesn't it, despite the emotional complexity, feel like a fleeting sentiment? As if he felt at one and the same time the initial cold detachment, the subsequent longing, and its harsh refusal?)

Why remove the brightness? That is the cold objective light and harsh contrast that emphasizes the poet's emotional solitude, foreshadows his eventual rejection of his emotional state, his approaching winter.

Why replace it with clean? The symmetry that matters is rhythmic: a progression of time and mood. The alliteration of "clean" and "clear" and the repetition of "leaves" are totally out of place. The initial impression is one of detached, neutral description, which this musical, value-laden metaphor of hygiene destroys.

"A cold raven flaps slowly"? "Cold raven" is just awful--it sounds like a recipe. And the original uses the word "startle" to mean "take start." Again, foreshadowing the movement of the poem from static, to seasonal, to suddenly static again. The raven initially appears to settle in for winter, like the poet waits for his feelings to pass, only to become unsettled again.

And what poet in his right mind would accidentally evoke the silly image and sound of a rooster with the word "roost" here? Note, too, the original's symmetry between the leaves that unite only to disperse and the bird that arrives only to depart. This suggests a comfortingly natural cycle of life and death--one the poet was expecting, one that fails him.

"thoughts of you fill my head": the original presents this as reciprocal: each thinks of the other, or at least the poet wonders if this may be. It's that possibility that perturbs him, initiating the poem's twist. The poem isn't solipsistic, the poet suffers from his inability to willfully be so, recalling her thoughts, her wondering, as well as his own.

The translation of the final line is a disaster. The entire poem is about time, and the final line is about killing it. But Young removes it altogether. The original even mentions it twice: "this hour, this night." And indirectly evoking the word "heartache" is not only painfully saccharine, but completely misses the point: he is shutting it down. He is preventing longing from turning into ache. He has brought winter early.

Some poems were very moving. Hard to believe these were all written over a thousand years ago.

Really enjoyable collection. The poems on their own are powerful, touching, and hauntingly beautiful. As an added bonus, the author's introductions allow for greater understanding and offer a lot of helpful insight into each poet's work.

MY MOUNT CHUNGNAN COTTAGE

Since middle age I've been
a most enthusiastic Buddhist

now that I'm old I've settled
here in the mountain country

sometimes I get so happy
I have to go off by myself

there are marvelous places
I alone know about

I climb
to the source of a stream

and sit
to watch the rising mists

sometimes I come across
an old man of the woods

we talk and laugh
and forget to go home.

Poetry is that which cannot be translated, especially when going from Chinese to English. Still, Young does a fine job of suggesting the poetry of the originals and this is well worth reading, especially if you like Imagist poetry.

Another bookful of cool wet moonlight.

Poems I liked (unordered):

1. 山居秋暝 (Shān Jū Qiū Míng) - Autumn Evening in the Mountains, Wang Wei
2. Walking in Mountains in the Rain, Wang Wei
3. Watching It Snow And Thinking of My Friend, The Hermit Hu, Wang Wei
4. High in the Mountains, I fail to find the wise man, Li Po
5. The Overdecorated Lute, Li Shang-yin
6. Fallen Flowers, Li Shang-yin