The Selected Poems of Po Chu-I

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Hinton's amazing, sensitive work
Review: A Servant Girl Is Missing

From the low walls of our small courtyard to the notice-board outside our district gate,

I've searched and searched, ashamed our love proved meager, wishing I could do it all over.

But a caged bird can't bear a master for long, and the branch means nothing to a blossom

freed on the wind. Where can she be tonight? Only the moon's understanding light knows.

This was written in the 9th century C.E. by the famous Chinese Tang dynasty poet Po Chu-I. Po's beautiful lines are Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist in influence, but something about them sings transcendent and is not easily categorized. Consider how much is contained in this poem: worry, a confession of wrongdoing, an admission of love, something about nature and the need for human freedom, and a tiny fragment of intuitive (mystic) insight when he adds: "Only the moon's understanding light knows." Whew! How did he do it, all carefully wrapped in deceptively simple rhyming couplets in the Chinese? I'm awed by this work, as I am by Po's modern English translator, David Hinton. This book is recently available in trade paperback by New Directions Publishing. Any of these Chinese poets (Hinton translates Meng Chiao and my favorite, T'ao Ch'ien, too, as well as others) will radically change your view of life, for theirs was a powerful and elegant civilization when Rome was still fighting off its hordes. These are beautiful, poignant, often sad, but very wise reflections about existence, metaphysics, and how to live a rich life.

Rating:
Summary: Quiet, calm and pure
Review: I read him just about every day. He's so seemingly simple, but at times there's another layer of meaning that's just visible beneath his words. Most of his verses create such vivid moments and scenery from his life. They look back through the long years at a time and place that's gone forever.

There's a certain sadness that prevails through his pieces - Information the publisher includes on Po Chu-I's life really helps give it form, make it understandable.

Rating:
Summary: The Finest Translation of Chinese Poems available Today
Review: This is the very finest translation of Chinese poems I have seen. I have over one hundred books of translations of Chinese poets.

Hinton is able to catch the feel of a Zen religous life by a famous civil servant of the late Tang Dynasty. He captures the bitter sweet character of the life many Chinese poets chose where they were two totally different people -- mystics and civil servants. We can find few people in world history on which to model our lifes with more real depth than Po Chi I, Su Tung Po, and Wang Wei.