Search results for ""author david hinton""

With this groundbreaking collection, translated and edited by the renowned poet and translator David Hinton, a new generation will be introduced to the work that riveted Ezra Pound and transformed modern poetry. The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE-1200 CE), the period during which virtually all of its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton's book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to recreate each one as a fully realized and unique voice. From the classic, deeply poetic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on the natural world, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight. And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel remarkably fresh and contemporary.Without ever reaching for anachronistic effects or colloquialisms, Hinton presents a literary tradition both radically new and entirely resonant.

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Formed in a time of great unrest in ancient China, The Analects is vital to an understanding of Chinese history and thought, and, 2,500 years on, it remains startlingly relevant to contemporary life.Complete and unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Highly regarded for the poetic fluency he brings to his award–winning work, David Hinton's translation is inviting and immensely readable.Confucius, the ‘great sage’ of China, believed that an ideal society is based on humanity, benevolence and goodness. His profoundly influential philosophy is encapsulated in The Analects, a collection of sayings which were written down by his followers. Confucius advocates an ethical social order, woven together by selfless and supportive relationships between friends, families and communities. He taught that living by a moral code based on education, ritual, respect and integrity will bring peace to human society.

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Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching is the source of Zen Buddhism, and is probably the most broadly influential spiritual text in human history.Complete & Unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is translated and introduced by David Hinton. Fluent in ancient Chinese and an acclaimed poet, he skilfully reveals how remarkably current and even innovative this text is after 2500 years.According to legend, Lao Tzu left China at the age of eighty, saddened that men would not follow the path to natural goodness. At the border with Tibet, a guard asked him to record his teachings and the Tao Te Ching is what he wrote down before leaving. Lao Tzu's spirituality describes the Cosmos as a harmonious and generative organism, and it shows how the human is an integral part of that cosmos.

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Tu Fu (712–770 C.E.) has for a millennium been widely considered the greatest poet in the Chinese tradition, and Hinton’s original translation played a key role in developing that reputation in America. Most of Tu Fu’s best poems were written in the last decade of his life, as an impoverished refugee fleeing the devastation of civil war. In the midst of these challenges, his always personal poems manage to combine a remarkable range of possibilities: elegant simplicity and great complexity, everyday life and grand historical drama, private philosophical depth and social engagement in a world consumed by war. Through it all, his is a wisdom that can only be called elemental, and his poems sound remarkably contemporary.

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During the last decade of his life, living as a recluse high in the mountains of southeast China, he initiated a tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" (shan-shui) poetry that stretches across the millennia in China, a tradition that represents the earliest and most extensive literary engagement with "the wild" in human history. These poems were hugely popular in Hsieh's own time and established him as one of the most innovative and influential poets in the history of Chinese poetry as well as a founder of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. Once again David Hinton, a recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Humanities and the winner of a Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets, has produced a fluid and supple translation that does full justice to the rivers-and-mountains of Hsieh Ling-yün's inspiration.

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Wang An-shih (1021-1086 C.E.) was a remarkable figure—not only one of the great Sung Dynasty poets, but also the most influential and controversial statesman of his time. Although Wang had little interest in the grandeur of high office and political power, he took the responsibility of serving the people seriously. He rose to become prime minister, and in this position he instituted a controversial system of radically egalitarian social reforms to improve the lives of China’s peasants. Once those reforms were securely in place, Wang retired to a reclusive life of artistic and spiritual self-cultivation. It was after his retirement, practicing Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism and wandering the mountains around his home, that Wang An-shih wrote the poems that made his reputation. Short and plainspoken, these late poems contain profound multitudes–the passing of time, rivers and mountains, silence and Buddhist emptiness. They won him wide acclaim in China and beyond across the centuries. And in Hinton's breathtaking translations, Wang feels like a major contemporary poet with deep ecological insight and a questioning spirit.

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There is a set-phrase in Chinese referring to the phenomenon of Li Po: “Winds of the immortals, bones of the Tao.” He moved through this world with an unearthly freedom from attachment, and at the same time belonged profoundly to the earth and its process of change. However ethereal in spirit, his poems remain grounded in the everyday experience we all share. He wrote 1200 years ago, half a world away, but in his poems we see our world transformed. Legendary friends in eighth-century T’ang China, Li Po and Tu Fu are traditionally celebrated as the two greatest poets in the Chinese canon. David Hinton’s translation of Li Po’s poems is no less an achievement than his critically acclaimed The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, also published by New Directions. By reflecting the ambiguity and density of the original, Hinton continues to create compelling English poems that alter our conception of Chinese poetry.

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Late in life, Meng Chiao (A.D. 751--814) developed an experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep introspection. This is truly major work-- work that may be the most radical in the Chinese tradition. And though written more than a thousand years ago, it is remarkably fresh and contemporary. But, in spite of Meng's significance, this is the first volume of his poetry to appear in English. Until the age of forty, Meng Chiao lived as a poet-recluse associated with Ch'an (Zen) poet-monks in south China. He then embarked on a rather unsuccessful career as a government official. Throughout this time, his poetry was decidedly mediocre, conventional verse inevitably undone by his penchant for the strange and surprising. After his retirement, Meng developed the innovative poetry translated in this book. His late work is singular not only for its bleak introspection and "avant-garde" methods, but also for its dimensions: in a tradition typified by the short lyric poem, this work is made up entirely of large poetic sequences.

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Generally acclaimed as one of China's greatest poets, Po Chü?-i (772-846 C.E.) practiced a poetry of everyday human concerns and clear plain-spoken language. In spite of his preeminent stature, this is the first edition of Po Chü?-i's poetry to appear in the West. It encompasses the full range of his work, from the early poems of social protest to the later recluse poems, whose spiritual depths reflect both his life-long devotion to Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist practice. David Hinton's translations of ancient Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling English texts that have altered our conception of Chinese poetry. Among his books published by New Directions are The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, and The Selected Poems of Li Po. His work has been supported by fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Humanities.

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