Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology
Translated and edited by David Hinton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008
Before Thanksgiving I began a leisurely read of this “all-star” poetry collection which spans 2700 years (1500 B.C.E. to 1200 C.E.). The anthology of nearly 500 poems “focuses on a relatively small number of poets and provides selections that are large enough to recreate each poet as a fully realized and unique voice” (jacket).
Gradually absorbing the earliest to the latest, developing insight on poets influencing poets, understanding their distinctive voices helped me to put my previous readings of Chinese poetry into a more organized perspective.
Allowing myself to linger over these poems opens the doors of internal perception and conscious reflection, a process of slowing down the pace of life and perhaps even learning to be more present with the world around me.
Ezra Pound’s translations of Chinese poetry helped to break away from formalist rhetoric. In addition, he influenced and published expatriates in Paris during the 1920s. The use of “concrete language and imagistic clarity” can easily be seen in Pound’s publication of Hemingway’s In Our Time: It’s not what you write that’s important; It’s what you leave out (xix).
Reading a larger volume on a measured daily basis allows you to live with your reading experience, to become absorbed and allow the meaning of the text to ease into your life.
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