Review by Choice Review
Wang Wei (c. 699-761) is known in China and abroad as one of the three greatest poets of the "Flourishing Tang," the era that produced much of China's greatest poetry. He is usually characterized as a "nature poet," who revels in the quiet respite offered to the world-weary by mountains and streams, capturing the mystical, quiet beauty of each setting in unforgettable images. Perhaps because of his concentration on natural visual images, Wang Wei is also one of the most translatable and widely translated of Chinese poets. In this collection of about 170 pieces the translators attempt to render Chinese poetry into English poetry, with emphasis on line-for-line poetic content rather than word-for-word translation, while retaining as much of the original Chinese denotative meaning as good English poetry will allow. The result is an extremely readable collection that captures most of Wang Wei's poetic spirit and much of his denotative meaning. The translations are less "scholarly" than those of Pauline Yu in The Poetry of Wang Wei (1980), but their "readability" will compensate for that shortcoming. Appropriate for college, community college, and public libraries. J. W. Walls; Simon Fraser University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Should Americans know any of China's great authors, they'll probably be the three Tang dynasty poets, Li Po, Tu Fu, and Wang Wei. Wang has become the favorite since World War II because his poetry is the most Taoist or Zenlike, and Taoism and Zen influenced a host of postwar American writers, especially on the West Coast. A court official, Wang longed for the simplicity found in rural retreat from the world--longed genuinely, his verse makes us feel, and also because to do so was intellectually de rigueur in his time. In fact, as veteran literary scholar and translator Barnstone imparts in his marvelous introduction (it actually furnishes the means for deeply appreciating Wang's allusive, implicative art), Wang was a serious Buddhist who studied with a Zen master. The poems that Westerners like best are landscapes full of silence and the absence of actors--an absence so profound that it is possible to forget that the poet must be present. In these translations, these intensely meditative poems are as finely Englished as they've ever been. ~--Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
