Li Po

Tu Fu

The poems of two of China’s most influential classical poets: Tu Fu, called “China’s Shakespeare” (BBC), and Li Po, the subject of Ha Jin’s The Banished Immortal and “China’s most beloved poet” (The New Yorker) A Penguin Classic Li Po (AD 701–62) and Tu Fu (AD 712–70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China's greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars to sublime heights in its descriptions of natural scenes and powerful emotions. His sheer escapism and joy is balanced by Tu Fu, who expresses the Confucian virtues of humanity and humility in more autobiographical works that are imbued with great compassion and earthy reality, and shot through with humour. Together these two poets of the T'ang dynasty complement each other so well that they often came to be spoken of as one – 'Li-Tu' – who covers the whole spectrum of human life, experience and feeling. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Poems

Li Po (701-762) rivals Du Fu for the title of China's greatest poet, and is considered to be the great Romantic poet of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He grew up in Sichuan province, China, and set out at the age of twenty-five to travel in the country, writing poems. A well-read student of both Confucianism and Taoism in his youth, and later an unofficial court poet, Li Po is credited as the author of over one thousand poems about wine, friendship, nature, solitude, and time. His works are revered for their exquisite imagery, rich and effortless language, and cadence - although some critics admonished his violation of traditional poetic form. The poet was a member of a group in Shandong called the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook," an informal group dedicated to literature and wine. Popular legend tells that an intoxicated Li Po drowned after falling from his boat in an attempt to embrace the reflection of the moon in the Yangtze River.

The Works of Li Po

Li Po (701-762) is considered one of the greatest poets to live during the Tang dynasty—what was considered to be the golden age for Chinese poetry. He was also the first Chinese poet to become well known in the West, and he greatly influenced many American poets during the twentieth century. Calling himself the "God of Wine" and known to his patrons as a "fallen immortal," Li Po wrote with eloquence, vividness, and often playfulness, as he extols the joys of nature, wine, and the life of a wandering recluse. Li Po had a strong social conscience, and he struggled against the hard times of his age. He was inspired by the newly blossoming Zen Buddhism and merged it with the Taoism that he had studied all his life. Though Li Po's love of wine is legendary, the translator, J. P. Seaton, includes poems on a wide range of topics—friendship and love, political criticism, poems written to curry patronage, poems of the spirit—to offer a new interpretation of this giant of Chinese poetry. Seaton offers us a poet who learned hard lessons from a life lived hard and offered his readers these lessons as vivid, lively poetry—as relevant today as it was during the Tang dynasty. Over one thousand poems have been attributed to Li Po, many of them unpublished. This new collection includes poems not available in any other editions.

Selected Poems of Li Po

Bright Moon, White Clouds

David Hinton

Bai Li

Po Li

Li Po (A.D., 701-762) lived in T’ang Dynasty China, but his influence has spanned the centuries: the pure lyricism of his poems has awed readers in China and Japan for over a millennium, and through Ezra Pound’s translations, Li Po became central to the modernist revolution in the West. His work is suffused with Taoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, but these seem not so much spiritual influences as the inborn form of his life. 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.

The Selected Poems

Wang Wei

Li Ho

Five great poets of the T'ang dynasty (eighth and ninth centuries A.D.) are represented in this collection: Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, and Li Shang-Yin. Each poet is introduced by the translator and represented by a selection that spans the poet's development and career. These constitute some of the greatest lyric poems ever written.

C. Hallman

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