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The Selected Poems of Wang Wei | 
| Author: Wang Wei
Creator: David Hinton
Publisher: New Directions
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.68
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 381829
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 0811216187
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.113
EAN: 9780811216180
ASIN: 0811216187
Publication Date: June 28, 2006
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
David Hinton, whose much-acclaimed translations of Li Po and Tu Fu have become classics, now completes the triumvirate of China's greatest poets with The Selected Poems of Wang Wei.
Wang Wei (701-761 C.E.) is often spoken of, with his contemporaries Li Po and Tu Fu, as one of the three greatest poets in China's 3,000-year poetic tradition. Of the three, Wang was the consummate master of the short imagistic landscape poem that came to typify classical Chinese poetry. He developed a nature poetry of resounding tranquility wherein deep understanding goes far beyond the words on the page—a poetics that can be traced to his assiduous practice of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. But in spite of this philosophical depth, Wang is not a difficult poet. Indeed, he may be the most immediately appealing of China's great poets, and in Hinton's masterful translations he sounds utterly contemporary. Many of his best poems are incredibly concise, composed of only twenty words, and they often turn on the tiniest details: a bird's cry, a splinter of light on moss, an egret's wingbeat. Such imagistic clarity is not surprising since Wang was also one of China's greatest landscape painters (see cover illustration). This is a breathtaking poetry, one that in true Zen fashion renders the ten thousand things of this world in such a way that they empty the self even as they shimmer with the clarity of their own self-sufficient identity.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Nice Translations of a Poetic Master November 8, 2008
Hinton has done a fine job translating some of Wang Wei's more famous works in this book. If you appreciate translations from folks like Watson, Seaton, and Rexroth, then you will like what he has done here. There is a nice introduction to the life of Wang Wei (not too long-winded, just right), and the notes following the poems are clear and concise. This is a nice work to add to any collection of poetry.
 A sad case of over-egging May 9, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Nobody can dispute the translator's knowledge of Chinese; it's the English that is bizarre. Hinton tends to
translate everything, especially titles, e.g most translators leave Huazi Ridge at that, but H. has "Master-Flourish Ridge." Cf also "At Azure-Dragon Monastery for Monk-Cloud Wall's Courtyard Assembly", "Apricot-Grain Cottage." This verges on the quaint - Chinoiserie. H. tends towards clipped English, but it doesn't match, as I imagine it's intended to, Chinese economy of language, but again a kind of orientalism intrudes, especially when religion comes into question, e.g. "Grasses cushion legs sitting ch'an stillness/up here...Inhabiting emptiness beyond dharma cloud,...("Climbing to Subtle-Aware Monastery"). There are uneasy echoes of Pound and 60s zen freaks. Occasionally, H. is cute:"Dear stone, little platter alongside cascading streamwater..." ("Playfully Written on a Flat Stone"). H. can be mannered, too. Lotus blossoms adrift out across treetops/flaunt crimson calyces among mountains." ("Magnolia Slope"). I'm afraid even H. falls into the trap of all too many English translators of Chinese poetry:they put on their singing robes and start writing English verse.
Christopher Busby
Great Poems in the Style of Meng Hou-Jan January 10, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The classic nature of this book of poems reflects the authors intellectual background so be sure to read the introduction. The poetry is of a very high quality and although it appears to be not as spontaneous as some Zen poetry this is offset by the quality and insights in his writings.
As he lived from 700 to 761 it is an insight into the age that produced the greatest Zen Master in Chinese history Hui Neng. Some might argue that Zen has never surpassed this age.
As a book for a non Zen person it is fine for its nature insights and interactions with zen masters and persons of influence but there are better books for the unitiated.
The translation appears, from someone who doesnt read chinese to be well thought out and the zen in the poems is not trampled over.
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