This is an old, small book from many, many years before I was born which I (fortunately) stumbled onto on a clearance rack at a used bookstore. It’s 60 pages of content, small, and has a nice cover. When I picked it up, I figured it would be a read for riding shotgun in the car.
I was wrong. This book is amazing. I haven’t read a poetry book in ages which really connected with me like the prose translations did in this. I had previously read their Zen Buddhism book and been impressed, but this book was that much better. They don’t really stick to the rules or the exact wording, but they definitely made it hit home for me.
What’s In It?
There is a broad assortment of poetry by Du Fu (杜甫), Li Bo (李白), a few things from The Book of Songs (诗经) and the DaoDeJing (道德经), and an assortment of other poets. The poetry is translated as prose, but the translator(s?) took care to keep some of the flow of some of the original poems.
The entire work is in English. Like their Zen Buddhism book, everything is translated really well for capturing the spirit of the work, especially for the time. They don’t use a literal translation like some works, and the translation is definitely done by someone fluent. Most translations without an author or by a Western author without a doctorate before the 80’s read like one of the discount I Ching (易经) translations which end up in every bookstore. In case you’ve never had the misfortune of reading one, that means it’s either confused and literal but run through a thesaurus, or completely made up and poetic.
Why’s It Worth Buying?
I would buy this book if only for one single poem in it. The rest are just gravy. Some are close, but none are as dear to me as the translation for The Ashes of My House on page 16. I have spent days trying to find the original.
I have personally been translating the DaoDeJing (道德经) and found their translations hold much closer than many newer, more academic translations, even if they do take a few liberties. They capture the raw humanity of the poetry at the expense of the accuracy of some poems, but others they manage to translate and capture both. It’s obvious a lot of hard work went into this book despite the fact it is a mere 60 pages with no more than 120 poems in it.
What’s Bad About It?
Literally the only thing I don’t like about this book is the fact it doesn’t have the originals or at least their titles with each poem. I have spent days trying to nail down my favorite poem from this work and gotten no closer. I’ve reached out to people with pictures of the translation in hopes someone can find it. They took some creative liberties with the wording for sure.
The romanization leaves a bit to be desired too, but that isn’t its goal either. It doesn’t use Pinyin or Wade-Giles for many things. It tries to stay closer to Wade-Giles for many things, but doesn’t on others.
The worst thing about this book is the fact it’s out of print though. I scored a nice used copy for a few dollars, but I would gladly have paid more because it’s amazing.
Conclusion
I have literally reached out to the publisher to try and get closure on where some of the material came from (they have no idea unfortunately). They’re still around and still actively printing things, though nothing like the works I’ve reviewed. If you happen to run into this one, pick it up. It’s worth it. Also, it’s fallen into the public domain.
Get it here or here for a free, legal digital version.