Chinese poetry

Chinese Poetry in this blog

This page is an index that organizes the various Chinese poetry entries in this blog and also lists sources that I have consulted and that you may enjoy.

Li Bai (Li Po, Li T’ai Po)

• Amusing myself
• A present for Meng Haoran
• Hearing a Flute on a Spring Night in Luoyang
• Hearing the monk Jun from Shu play the qín
• In the mountains a question and an answer
• Jade stairs complaint
• Longing, in springtime
• Seeing off Meng Haoran at Yellow Crane Tower on his way to Guangling

Meng Haoran (Mèng Hàorán, Meng Hao-jan, Meng Hau-ran)

• A memento to keep our friendship as I part from Wang Wei
• Autumn, climbing Orchid Mountain and staying with Zhang
• In the Qin country, feeling autumn come while staying with the priest Yuan
• Memories, when winter cold first comes to the river
• Mooring for the night on the Jiande River
• On a summer day at the South Pavilion thinking of Xin
• Spending time at the farm of an old friend
• Spring, at Dawn
• Waiting all evening at the teacher’s mountain lodge for my friend Ding who hasn’t arrived

Su Tung-P’o (Su Dongpo, Su Shi)

• A visit to the Temple of Auspicious Fortune, alone at Winter Solstice
• A visit to the temple of the God of Mercy, on a rainy day
• Awaiting the new year
• Dreaming of My Deceased Wife on the Night of the 20th Day of the First Month
• Impromptu Verse
• Impromptu Verse, again
• lyrics for the tune of “Fairy Grotto”
• lyrics for the tune of “Immortal by the River”
• Mid-autumn moon
• Written on the north tower wall after snow

Tao Qian (T’ao Ch’ien, Tao Yuanming)

• Drinking wine
• Returning to Live in the South 1
• Returning to Live in the South 3
• Returning to Live in the South 5
• Pallbearer’s Song

Wang Wei

• Bird-singing Stream
• Chung-nan Mountain
• In the Mountains
• Living in the Mountains, Autumn Darkness
• My Retreat at Chung-nan Mountain
• Random Poem
• Returning, Song Mountain
• Stopping at the Incense Temple
• Wei City Song

from Wang Wei’s “Wang River Collection”

• The Bamboo Grove
• The Deer Enclosure
• Hsin-i Village
• Jinzhu Ridge
• The Luan Family’s Rapids
• Mengcheng Cove
• The Path to the Temple Tree
• The Pavilion at the Lake
• South Hill

Also: Translation — “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu

Further reading

Note: The entries here are linked, via the ISBN number, to Wikipedia’s Book Sources. If you scroll down their page you can find multiple, worldwide sources from which to buy new or used books, to trade them with other readers, or to check them out of libraries.

Websites with Chinese text and word-by-word English

Chinese Poems, a beautiful site with many poems in Chinese text with word-by-word English and an idiomatic English translation. Also, book reviews, links, and language study resources.

Tang Shi — 300 Tang Poems, from Wengu — Chinese Classics and Poems. Select the link at the top for a type of verse or for a poet, then hover mouse over any Chinese word for a basic definition — or click for a more extended one. Read from top to bottom, right to left. The same site has Shi Jing — The Book of Songs.

Bilingual anthologies with word-by-word English from which you can construct your own translation

Johnson, Stephen. Fifty Tang Poems. San Francisco: Pocketscholar Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9679453-0-5.

Whincup, Greg. The Heart of Chinese Poetry. Garden City: Anchor Press, Doubleday, 1987. ISBN 0-385-23967-X.

Yip, Wai-Lim. Chinese Poetry. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8223-1946-2.

Other bilingual anthologies

Pine, Red. Poems of the Masters. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2003. ISBN 1-55659-195-0.

Anthologies in English translation

Barnstone, Tony and Chou Ping. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry. Garden City: Anchor, 2005. ISBN 0-385-72198-6. This book has an online supplement.

Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1971. ISBN 0-8112-0180-5.

Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1970. ISBN 0-8112-0179-1.

Seaton, JP. The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry. Boulder: Shambhala, 2006. ISBN 1-57062-862-9.

Waley, Arthur. A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. Sandwich: Chapman Billies, 1997. ISBN 0-939-218-17-8.

Waley, Arthur. Chinese Poems. New York: Dover Publications, 2000. ISBN 0-486-41102-8.

Watson, Burton. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-231-05683-4.

Weinberger, Eliot. The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2004. ISBN 0-8112-1605-5. (Translations by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton — with helpful introduction and source material on Chinese poetics.)

T’ang Dynasty in English

Arthur Cooper. Li Po and Tu Fu. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1973. ISBN 0-14-044272-3.

Graham, A.C. Poems of the Late T’ang. Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin, 1977. ISBN 0-14-044157-3.

Young, David. Five Tʻang Poets. Oberlin: Oberlin College Press, 1990. ISBN 0-932440-55-X.

Wang Wei

Weinberger, Eliot and Octavio Paz. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. Mt. Kisco: Moyer Bell, 1987. ISBN 0-918825-14-8.

Yu, Pauline. The Poetry of Wang Wei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. 0-253-17772-3.

General anthologies of Chinese literature

Owen, Stephen. An Anthology of Chinese Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. ISBN 0-393-97106-6.

Chinese Poetics

Liu, James. The Art of Chinese Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. ISBN 0-226-48687-7.

Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. ISBN 0-231-08671-7.

Watson, Burton. Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century, with translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. ISBN 0-231-03465-2.