Description
Book SynopsisYang Mu is a towering figure in modern Chinese poetry.
Hawk of the Mind is a comprehensive collection of Yang Mu’s poetry that presents crucial works from the many stages of his long creative career, rendered into English by a team of distinguished translators, illustrating the distinctive style and affective power of a great poet.
Trade ReviewThe work of Taiwanese poet Yang Mu brings vivid and playful pastoral imagery. He examines both Chinese and Western literary and cultural traditions through his personal lens, and his writing retains its beautifully lyrical nature through the translation. * World Literature Today *
Braiding images of nature with self-aware literary reference and linguistic terminology, Yang Mu shifts between intimate and expansive realms as he adopts personae. Occasionally retaining in their rich and piquant translations some of the nonspecific agency that typifies Chinese grammar, the translators deftly lavish attention not only on semantic meanings but on meanings made by sounds and tonal sequences. -- Forrest Gander, author of
Core Samples from the WorldAn expertly translated, edited, and introduced collection, showcasing the distinctive craft of a consummate lyricist. “Poetry is insistence, not compromise,” writes Yang Mu. What a sumptuous feast he has served us in that remarkable spirit! -- Rey Chow, author of
Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial ExperienceWidely recognized as the most significant lyrical voice now writing in Chinese, Yang Mu is a national figure in Taiwan who has been recently promoted as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Moreover, the translators are undoubtedly the very best in the English world. The renditions are superb and meet the linguistic challenges of the originals with dexterity and imagination. -- William Tay, University of California, San Diego
Yang Mu is always at or near the top of any list of contemporary modernist Chinese-language poets. Thanks to Michelle Yeh and her colleagues, the translations of his poems in this collection offer a generous selection of his lifetime of erudite engagement with both Chinese and Western cultures. -- Edward Gunn, Cornell University
These are superb translations of a sovereign poetic oeuvre. Yang Mu’s writing is at once delicate and forceful, reasoned and imaginative, cosmopolitan and grounded. Sixty years of poetry unfurl through a voice that breaks new ground time and again yet retains its constancy.
Hawk of the Mind is a major achievement—and a delight. -- Maghiel van Crevel, Leiden University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Burning and Diffusing Through Eternity: An Introduction to Yang Mu
Poems The Star Is the Only Guide 1
Water’s Edge
To Time
Fragment
Folding Screen
A Sequel to Han Yu’s “Mountain Rocks,” a Seven-Character Poem in the Old Style
Snake: A Rondo
Jizi of Yanling Hangs Up His Sword
King Wu’s Night Encampment: A Suite
Etudes: The Twelve Earthly Branches
Sailing to Ireland
Ireland
Let the Wind Recite
Manuscript in a Bottle
Lines of the Hand
Bring You Home to Hualian
Solitude
Forbidden Games 1
Paddy Field Region
Light Rain
To the Ancient
Minor Realization
Sonnet: The Travelers
Tree in the College
Looking Down
Someone Asks Me a Question About Justice and Righteousness
Tree
Miaoyu Sits in Meditation
Departing the Grasslands
Sonnets on
The Book of Changes Leaving a Banquet Early in Summer Heat
Lama Reincarnated
Village Sonnets
In Lieu of a Letter
Fable Number 2: Yellow Sparrow
Variation on “A Traveler’s Heart”
Hawk of the Mind
Remembering Berkeley
Written on Returning to the Northwest
Dusk from an Upper Floor
Episodic Capriccio for Solo
Six Quatrains, Written in Fun
Propositions of Temporality
Chang’an
A Lyric
To the Angel
Afternoon of a Gladiolus
Lakeview
Tale (In the meter of “Metamorphosis Two” by Philip Glass)
Bohori (Khabarovsk, 1994)
Midnight
Solitude. 1910
St. Petersburg
Grain Buds
Ars Poetica
Gazing Up
New Songs
Symbol
A Flurry of Snow
Seven Stars Bay
The Previous Life
Under the Pine
Rabbits
Rays of the Fading Sun
The Vacated Seat
Portrait of a Lady
Song of Floss Flower
Composed for the Lyrical Oboe
Subject
Misimpression
Pheasant
A Draw in a Game of Chess
The Water Nymph
Pindar’s Ode
Fallen Leaves
The Lost Ring—for Chechnya
Written at Daybreak
No Time Difference
Ancient Banyan Tree in Tainan
The Rite of Passage
Ziye Extemporizes in Song
War
Forgotten
The Heart Wavers
Substitution
Untitled 1
Untitled 2
The Fog and My Other Self
Cycad Aulacaspis Scale
Dragonfly
Since You Went Away
Betel Creek, Chinan Lakefront #2:
Partita per Violoncello Pine Garden
To the Tune “Behind the Soochow Curtain”
Title Unknown
Zuocang: Sakor
Cloud Ship
On Solitude
Greece
Discussing Poetry Writing with Someone
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit
Fern Songs
Reading Dante at Year’s End
Fluctuating Rhythm
As Yet Unattained
Written for a Meeting
Lectures
Variations on
Zither Melodies No. 9
Listening to the Wind
Autumn
Preface to
Manuscript in a Bottle Afterword to
Someone: Poetry Is Written for People
Afterword to
Propositions of Temporality Afterword to
Cycad Aulacaspis Scale Select Bibliography
Translators
