Where Burton Watson Schools Us

The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry by Burton Watson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very nice collection of Chinese poetry, filled with wonderful literature from many time periods, but it is also a useful survey for students or others new to these works.

Much of the literature here is available in other collections, especially the poetry from the biggest Tang writers, but a lot of it was still new to me. And the introduction, chapter openings, and back matter were very useful, even for bits I'd read elsewhere. Burton Watson does an excellent job of explaining and teaching those of us in the West who are unfamiliar with the references and common symbols and the like or are still working out the differences between the various poetic forms. It's hard (but not impossible) to appreciate poetry in translation if you don't have some of these additional helps, and I appreciate how well Burton Watson supported us.

I still prefer books that are collections of works all by a single author--for the same reason that I prefer the original albums to "best of" albums, which are nice but lacking something--so I don't have quite the same feeling when I read collections like this, with examples from so many different authors. It feels somewhat artificial in a way I can't entirely defend. But it obviously has its uses, and this is a very good example of that type of collection. In addition to presenting some very fine poetry and educating me on it, a benefit of books like this one is tipping me off to "new" poets (from 1000 years ago or 800 years ago!) that may have whole books of just their work done by some helpful translator that I can now go look for. I have a few such names that I intend to follow up on.

In general, I love Chinese poetry for it's themes and simple clarity--so much is about loving the land, admiring a beautiful landscape, drinking wine with a neighbor, growing vegetables on a small plot, looking out over a river for a sail you recognize, and other romantic topics--and there's a bunch of that here. I'm aware that there can be many important messages buried in such simple-looking lines, which the editor sometimes clues us into, but even without that it's possible to love much of this literature. My favorites? Wang Wei, Li Po, and Tu Fu, out of the Tang era (who are so popular it is kind like saying you like Shakespeare, but it's true), and Su Tung-p'o, from the later Sung era. However, I'm now on the hunt for books focused on Lu Yu, Mei Yao-ch'en, and a few others. That alone makes it worth looking into this collection.

Wish me luck finding them.

New readers especially should take a look at this collection. Recommended.

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Where I Find Some Great New (to me) Poets

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very nice collection, nicely translated and annotated. I enjoyed it a lot.

Tu Fu, with more than thirty poems in this collection, gets more coverage than any of the other poets, but with only two exceptions we get a good number of examples from every poet here. I like it that way, getting five or ten or more poems from the same poet. This gives the reader a chance to form an opinion of them, get a better idea of what they're like, and maybe follow up by finding collections devoted to each one. (That's what I intend to do, anyway.) Some collections like this have lots of poets with only one or two poems each, and I find that less interesting than the way it is here.

The topics and themes of the selections are pretty universal and generally comprehensible to someone not deeply familiar with culture-bound ideas. You don't need to know much about Chinese culture 1000 years ago to make sense of them or enjoy them. There are some helpful notes at the back (which I realized too late) but they aren't essential. I like it that way--just poetry up front, with background information at the back of the book. It's a nicer esthetic, IMO.

I liked the translations, and for probably half of them I liked the formatting as well. I had just an occasional "I wouldn't have done it that way" thought about how to arrange the lines on the page, but it wasn't enough to take me out of the poetry. In general, I found this a pleasure to read, and I think most readers will feel the same.

Recommended. I already hunted up the second volume, and I'm looking forward to it.

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The Best Translator for the Best Tang and Sung Poetry

Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse by Red Pine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing book and highly recommended.

Usually, I score based on the ridiculously subjective assessment of how fun was it to read? On that scale, I'll admit, this was about 3.5. But it's so well presented and so well broken down for the reader, I have to give it all the points.

This is a collection of 224 poems from Tang and Sung China, first collected in the 13th century and amended a bit afterwards. Part of what's interesting is seeing what contemporary readers (or readers who were at least several hundred years closer to their creation than we are) considered the most important poetry of those times. I'll admit, it's not what I would have chosen. But the original collectors would have taken into account the appropriateness of rhyme and meter and other effects of language that don't survive in translation, and of course I care nothing for that since I don't read Chinese. I prefer poetry with a lot of comprehensible imagery and easily accessed human emotion that one can still connect with. And there is some of that for sure.

But what there is plenty of is support for the English reader. Red Pine is (in my narrow, unsophisticated but unerring opinion) the absolute best at translating the poetry and supplying commentary making the poetry accessible. The fact that this poetry needs so much support is what makes it not my favorite, but having decided to read it, I can say that this is undoubtedly the best English version to get into it. Red Pine gives amazing biographical details, explicates oblique references to poetry we simply don't know, places the poetry in a specific historical context, and supplies all kinds of cultural knowledge that makes the poems make sense. It's a lot.

Ideally, I prefer to read poetry in books with nothing but the poems. You know? Just the words, just the lines. It's so much prettier to look at and more esthetic to experience. But that wouldn't work here at all, so the half-page or so of explanation for each poem is the next best thing.

There are lots of poems by familiar poets like Wang Wei or Tu Fu or Li Bai, but there are many, many more by poets I'd never heard of. Some of them, hopefully, will lead me to collections of their own.

Anyway, lots to enjoy and chew on here. Highly recommended for those making a study of Chinese poetry. Modestly recommended for casual readers like me.

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Where I Agree With the Author

Five T'ang Poets by Wang Wei
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very nice collection of Tang dynasty poetry.

I've read other similar books that I thought would make a good introduction to the era and the poets, but I think this may be the best of them. David Young, the translator, is himself a poet, which is not always the case, and I think it shows. Not only does he give the English versions a smoothness, an evenness of tone, that is often lacking, he does an excellent job in the introduction describing how he arrived at his translations, what sort of compromises he was making. I found myself in agreement with his approach both as he described it and as it was demonstrated in the poetry. A strictly faithful translation, transcribing the terse, elliptical language common in most poetry of the time, is almost incomprehensible in English; a highly Anglicized version (especially with rhyme--shudder) loses any hint of the original. I like the middle ground Young has found. In addition, he writes very useful introductions to each of the five poets, and they add to the pleasure of reading these.

Many of these poems are found in other collections, and when I look at some of them closely, I find that I like these better. They read more naturally and, to my mind, have greater impact. As a simple example, the first line in one poem is translated in another book as

You ask how long before I come. Still no date is set.

Young renders the line as

You ask when I'll be back--
I wish I knew!

The first sounds too much like a business letter to me; Young's version sounds--and looks--like poetry. The distinction is not always that stark, but that is the trend.

As to the literature itself, I am partial to Tang poetry. Much of it, especially the ones I understand, read like western Romantic poetry from the 19th century (which is a good thing, IMO). Natural settings and nature imagery; human emotion; an occasional interest in common folk; a focus on art and the creative process... all attributes that I have enjoyed in western poetry and work for me as a reader. It makes these poems, and this collection in particular, accessible.

Unrelated, but key to my reaction: the book, in many places, is annotated. It clearly came from a student taking notes in class, and it was fun to see what the conversation was. Reminded me of a very long time ago. I highly recommend a student-annotated copy if you can it. :)

Good stuff. Recommended.

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Where I Agreed With the Translator

Poems of the Late T'ang by A.C. Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very readable and enjoyable collection of poetry from the late Tang dynasty.

These translations have a number of moving parts. Always, there is an introduction, with the translator's take on his job; there are the poems themselves, in English; and there are the notes for specific poems along the way. All are done well here, IMO, though the poems that I least enjoyed are among the most celebrated--so that's a bummer.

A. C. Graham does an outstanding job of showing, in some detail, with specific examples, the manner in which these elliptical and allusive Chinese poems are translated into English, illustrating the difficulties in attempting to convey as much of the literal meaning, connotations, rhythm, rhyme, and other elements as possible without harming the other aspects of the poetry. The tradeoffs are obvious--forcing the poems to rhyme in the target language adversely affects the word choice, while focusing on exact meaning not only makes rhyme impossible but makes it more difficult to employ anything near the original rhythm: "As these lines illustrate," the translator tells us in the introduction, "the ideal of perfect literalness is soon betrayed by concessions to idiomatic smoothness, rhythm, and immediate intelligibility." He describes the balance he attempted to achieve between the varying demands of the original, and I find I agree with his determination.

I also approve of his within-text notes, which are mostly spare, though he troubles himself to fully annotate a few poems. (These are the ones I liked least, some poetry that is so densely packed with hints and allusions and metaphors and culture-bound idiom that it is utterly opaque to the reader without the notes and not very interesting with it.) In general, I found the occasional notes useful and not too disruptive to the reading. Other similar volumes are so packed with notes and helpful intrusions that it dries the poetry out to the texture of a stiff old textbook, a fate I feel he has avoided.

Some of the poetry here, like much of Tang poetry that I've encountered before, is direct and clear and comprehensible, filled with concrete imagery, universal experience, and relatively natural language. (The stuff I like.) Much of it, however, is more mannered, more difficult, based more on poetic models emerging from a mature tradition. These poems, according to the notes, are some of the most admired in the canon, at least among Chinese readers, but they are the least successful in translation. Understanding them even a little is more of an academic exercise (not a bad thing, all in all) than an aesthetic one. But, IMO, there are enough of the former that I still have an overall appreciation for the book.

Recommended most for students of Tang poetry or those who've already pored over the most common collections. There is a lot to enjoy here, and a great deal to work through if one is interested.

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Where the Poetry Gets Stepped on

Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems by Li Bai
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gotta admit--I didn't love it. This book is mostly introduction and annotations--probably less than 30% is poetry. And the poetry was the whole reason I got it.

Sure, the annotations, the lengthy explications, and the careful interpretation of unfamiliar idioms and allusions were useful, in a way. This is a primer in reading the poetry of these two men. For those studying their poetry, I would happily recommend this volume.

For the rest of us just wanting to read poetry and get lost in it, this one will annoy. Sure, I guess I could try re-reading it now, skipping all the extra text. I think I might do that, honestly, and see if I enjoy the translations more. Reading it as written feels more like listening to music on NPR, where you have a 3 minute song and then 10 minutes of discussion. Those proportions are all out of whack.

Ironically, the subtitle of this collection is simply "Poems," as if that's all you'll find here. I wish.

My purpose for reading poetry is to locate those poems or passages I connect with somehow. It's like hunting for easter eggs for me. I keep track of the ones I really liked and eventually copy them into a journal. In some collections, I find reason to genuinely connect with and return to a quarter or more of the poems. This collection: two. Just two. I don't know if it was all the notes on every side being a distraction or if the translations were not quite working for me or if the selection was skewed toward technically interesting poetry rather than human and accessible, but I didn't dig it.

And I wanted to.

Oh yeah. The translator frequently referred to Mao, kinda positively. I think maybe four times. The first time was forgivably odd, but each additional reference doubled and redoubled my disapproval. It soured the experience, honestly.

I'll put it aside and look at it again another day. Today I'm starting a different book. Here's to better luck!

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