762 AD; 144 pages. New Translator? : Yes. Genres : Poetry; Chinese Literature; Ancient
China. Laurels: Winner of the 1997
Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. Overall
Rating : 9*/10.
Li Po (aka Li
Bai and Li Bo) is a celebrated
Chinese poet (born 701 CE; died 762 CE) who lived during the reign of
the Tang dynasty.
I first became acquainted with his poems when
I was taking night classes to learn Mandarin
Chinese. It was a fun way to build my
vocabulary. There are of course other
equally famous Chinese poets from that Golden Age of China, but for some reason
Li Po’s works struck a chord with me.
Maybe it was due to his terse,
yet vivid descriptions of the Chinese countryside back then. Maybe it was his appreciative nods to other
Chinese poets with which he spent some time.
Maybe it was the way he shuffled off his mortal coil.
To quote David Hinton, the
translator of The Selected Poems of Li Po: “Li Po died as the legend says he died: out drunk in a
boat, he fell into a river and drowned trying to embrace the moon.” What a way to go.
What’s To Like...
The Selected
Poems of Li Po is divided into five sections, namely”
Introduction (pgs. xi-xxv)
Early
Years (AD. 701-742) (pgs.
1-37)
Ch’ang
An and Middle Years (AD 712-755) (pgs.
39-87)
War,
Exile, and Later Years (AD 755-762)
(pgs. 89-=123)
Notes
(pgs. 124-129), which were quite helpful.
I highly recommend reading the
Introduction, as it gives the reader insight
into what was going on in China at that time.
It also describes the life of wandering poets (think: “bards”) of which Li Po was one, and well as a lot of enlightening details about Li Po’s life.
I suspect Li Po’s watery demise may be more legend than fact; OTOH
it easily conforms to the lifestyle he was living.
Many of the selected poems are
short—often as little as four lines of verse.
Yet somehow it was easy to imagine the picturesque descriptions of the mountainous
regions he traversed, and his awe when beholding them. I also found it heartwarming that he viewed
the other professional poets wandering throughout China at the time as
brethren, not rivals.
I also loved that some of Li
Po’s poems have a very “modern” slant to them.
The poem “Ch’ang-Kan Village Song” (pgs.
13-14) tells of a girl, married at fourteen, who’s now in the autumn of her
life, and is depicted by Li Po as having a very strong character. Similarly, the poem “Frontier Mountain Moon” (pg. 26), bemoans the
human cost of expansionist militarism.
See the second excerpt below, for part of this poem. It’s amazing that poems such as these two
were penned more than 1200 years ago.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.5/5
based on 97 ratings and 25 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.27/5 based on 1,104
ratings and 92 reviews.
Excerpts...
Crossing into distances beyond Ching-men,
I set out through ancient southlands, here
mountains fall away into wide-open plains,
and the river flows into boundless space.
The moon setting, heaven’s mirror in
flight,
clouds build, spreading to seascape towers.
Poor waters of home. I know how it feels:
ten thousand miles of farewell on this boat.
(pg. 5)
Our armies moving down White-Ascent Road,
Mongols probing along Sky-Blue Seas—
soldiers never return from those forced
marches ending on battlefields. Countless
guards look out across moonlit borderlands,
thinking of home, their faces all grief.
And somewhere, high in a tower tonight,
a restless woman cries out in half-sleep. (pg. 26)
Once you drink
enlightenment and wisdom, why go searching for gods and immortals? (pg. 44)
There’s zero cases of
profanity in The Selected Poems of Li Po. I don’t recall any “adult situations”. Obviously, the world wasn’t ready for a Beat Generation
Chinese poet yet.
Be aware that, as the Introduction
tells, Li Po really loved to drink wine, get drunk, and write about the subsequent
joys of such a habit. I counted 20 of
the poems here that he mentions his devotion to partaking of the fruit of the vine. A votre sante,
Li Po!
As noted above, there were some
very helpful Notes in the back of the book.
However, the referenced text isn’t marked in any way, so
I had to keep flipping back to the Notes to make sure I wasn’t missing out.
Finally, be aware that there
is a lot of empty spaces in the 123 pages of poetry. Every four-line poem, and there are a bunch
of them, takes up a complete page. If
you want to, you can easily read this book in one sitting.
But I preferred to read a dozen or so poems at a time, then sit back and think about the emotions, thoughts, and insights Li Po was trying to convey via these writings. Although, if you’re a student with a book report due tomorrow, and you
haven’t even started reading anything, this one’s for you.
The blank spaces
notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed The Selected Poems of Li Po. It validated my initial findings of 25 years
ago when I was taking Mandarin classes.
Li Po’s writing appealed to me back then; it still does today. Wikipedia says there are a thousand or so poems by Li Po still around. It may be time to visit the bookstore in search of more of his poetry.
9 Stars. One last thing. If you go out to Goodreads and access its page on this book, you’ll find the publishing date listed as 762, which is quite some time ago. I loved this choice of publishing date by whoever set the entry up.
