nwasianweekly.com
June 26, 2004

A quick look at books

Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine, debuted last spring when Port Townsend’s Copper Canyon Press put on a lush evening of poetry and scholarship amidst the countless treasures found in the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Featured that evening was a living human treasure, Bill Porter, or Red Pine, as he is also known. The gathering celebrated and honored the great poetic tradition of China — something the translator has devoted most of his life to.

The first exposure I had to the writing of Bill Porter was in the 1990s, when Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits, seemed to leap from the bookstore shelf and into my hands. Although it’s been 10 years since I read the book, which is part-travelogue and part-philosophical history, I can still journey back in my mind to the wild haunts of the deep heart of China, so vivid and fresh was his approach.

Porter and a photographer tramped into the Chungnan Mountains in 1989 to write Road to Heaven. They returned with a collection of stories from the hermits they met and the hermits they had heard of. Both scholar and adventurer, the author details stories of dozens of men and women who had chosen to live outside of the confines of society.

Poems of the Masters is the other, and more well known, side of the translator’s works. Although he does not consider himself a poet, the way in which he dances with language and form has led many other readers to believe Red Pine to be one. He describes his latest translation effort thusly:

“The Chinese title of this book is Chi’ien-chia-shih, which literally means Thousand Poems of the Masters. There are, however, only a hundred or so poets represented; hence, I have dropped the numeral. Despite the exaggeration, Poems of the Masters includes the most-quoted poems of China’s Golden Age of Poetry. And for the past eight centuries, it has been the most memorized collection of verse in China and part of every student’s education.”

Poems of the Masters renders both the Chinese and English on facing pages. This, together with the author’s notes on the poet and a brief history of the time in which it was written, allows the readers to readily envision thoughts uttered a thousand years ago.

In “Mister Su’s Country Retreat,” for example, the poet Tsu Yang (699-746) visits a friend’s retreat. The translator tells us that not long after he wrote this, the poet resigned his post to live in a hermitage. The longing for a quieter, richer internal life easily resonates today:



Your country retreat is such a quiet place

I think of retiring each time I come

the Chungnan Mountains fill your doors and windows

the Feng River brightens your trees and garden

your bamboos bend with winter-long snow

your courtyard is dark before dusk

beyond the sound and reach of man

I sit and listen to the birds of spring



The 224 short poems in the anthology were first published in China around the 13th century. They are a continuing exploration of Red Pine’s fascination with the hermit tradition as well as what he calls the greatest art of China, its poetry.

The introduction points out that these poems came from a time when poetry was everywhere and people at all levels of society wrote and included poetry in all aspects of life. Chang Feng (1052-1112) was a minister in charge of religious observances in the Sung capital of Kaifeng and a member of a famous literary coterie. His poem “Summer Day” reveals his love of simplicity:



Late summer on the river the sun and wind are mild

the little birds below the eaves are grown

sun-drenched butterflies dance among the flowers

newly spun spider webs brighten every room

threadbare curtains invite the moon’s reflection

a pillow made of clay echoes with the current

my long-graying temples recall the frost and snow

let me pass this life chopping wood and fishing



Don’t rush out to buy this book. Buy it on a day when you have decided to do nothing other than enjoy every minute of life. Or wander to the library gazing at the clouds overhead as you stroll. Sit for a while with shih, the language of the heart, and listen and enjoy.

Ann-Marie Stillion can be reached at annmarie@nwasianweekly.com.

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