The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry
- Book Review,
by Eliot Weinberger
Mark Hutchinson, Times Literary Supplement
The most fitting compliment I can pay to [Weinberger's] work is...that it makes you sit up in your seat.
Ralph Magazine, A.W. Allworthy, October 2003
An excellent chance to investigate Chinese poetry in translation.
Pankaj Mishra, Times Literary Supplement [London] Books of the Year, 5 December 2003
The introduction and the essays by American translators reveal the cosmopolitan influences on an earlier generation of American poets.
Contemporary Poetry Review, 6 February 2004
Best Anthology of 2003: Eliot Weinberger's anthology could help to redefine the genre.
American Poet, Spring 2004
Arguably...the most influential and divergent English translations that modern and contemporary poets produced.
Conger Beasley, Jr., New Letters, Winter 2004/05
An example of cultural cross-fertilization at its best.
Book Description
Modern American poets translate classical Chinese poetry. The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry is a rich compendium of translations like no other. It is the first to look at Chinese poetry through its enormous influence on American poetry, starting with Ezra Pound's Cathay (1915), and including translations by three other major US poets (William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder) and an important poet-translator-scholar (David Hinton), all of whom have long been associated with New Directions. Moreover, it is the first general anthology ever to consider the process of translation by presenting different versions of the same poem by various translators, as well as examples of the translators rewriting themselves. The collection, at once playful and instructive, serves as an excellent introduction to the art and tradition of Chinese poetry, gathering some 250 poems by nearly 40 poets, from the anonymous early poetry through the great masters of the T'ang and Sung dynasties. The anthology also includes previously uncollected translations by Pound, a selection of essays on Chinese poetry by all five translators, some never published before in book form, and biographical notes that are a collage of poems and comments by both the American translators and the Chinese poets themselves.
About the Author
Translator and essayist Eliot Weinberger's first study of multiple Chinese translations was the perennially popular 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. New Directions publishes three collections of his inventive essays and among his many translations are works by Octavio Paz, Bei Dao, and Jorge Luis Borges.
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