How to Read Chinese Poetry

How to Read Chinese Poetry
Author: Zong-qi Cai
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231139411

In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original. The companion volume How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook presents 100 famous poems (56 are new selections) in Chinese, English, and romanization, accompanied by prose translation, textual notes, commentaries, and recordings. Contributors: Robert Ashmore (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Zong-qi Cai; Charles Egan (San Francisco State); Ronald Egan (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara); Grace Fong (McGill); David R. Knechtges (Univ. of Washington); Xinda Lian (Denison); Shuen-fu Lin (Univ. of Michigan); William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Univ. of Wisconsin); Maija Bell Samei; Jui-lung Su (National Univ. of Singapore); Wendy Swartz (Columbia); Xiaofei Tian (Harvard); Paula Varsano (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Fusheng Wu (Univ. of Utah)

How to Read a Chinese Poem

How to Read a Chinese Poem
Author:
Publisher: Booksurge Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Chinese poetry
ISBN: 9781419670138

This bilingual edition of Tang poems offers a new approach to reading and understanding classical Chinese poetry. Included are nearly two hundred regulated verses written by the great poets of the Tang Dynasty, such as Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei, Li Shangyin, and Meng Haoran. For each poem, both traditional and simplified Chinese characters are provided for cross reference. In addition to its literary translation, each poem is given a bilingual annotation with respect to the literal meanings of each key word or phrase. The tone and pinyin transliteration of each Chinese character are also provided. Readers who are familiar with the pinyin system can learn to recite the original poem the way the Chinese read it. This book is designed to help the readers understand Tang poems from a bilingual perspective. It may also be a helpful learning tool for students who want to learn Chinese through poetry.

The Heart of Chinese Poetry

The Heart of Chinese Poetry
Author: Greg Whincup
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1987-09-16
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 038523967X

Greg Whincup offers a varied and unique approach to Chinese translation in The Heart of Chinese Poetry. Special features of this edition include direct word-for-word translations showing the range of meaning in each Chinese character, the Chinese pronunciations, as well as biographical and historical commentary following each poem.

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei
Author: Eliot Weinberger
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780811226202

A new expanded edition of the classic study of translation, finally back in print

Poems of the Late T'ang

Poems of the Late T'ang
Author:
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2008-01-22
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781590172575

Classical Chinese poetry reached its pinnacle during the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), and the poets of the late T'ang-a period of growing political turmoil and violence-are especially notable for combining strking formal inovation with raw emotional intensity. A. C. Graham’s slim but indispensable anthology of late T’ang poetry begins with Tu Fu, commonly recognized as the greatest Chinese poet of all, whose final poems and sequences lament the pains of exile in images of crystalline strangeness. It continues with the work of six other masters, including the “cold poet” Meng Chiao, who wrote of retreat from civilization to the remoteness of the high mountains; the troubled and haunting Li Ho, who, as Graham writes, cultivated a “wholly personal imagery of ghosts, blood, dying animals, weeping statues, whirlwinds, the will-o'-the-wisp”; and the shimmeringly strange poems of illicit love and Taoist initiation of the enigmatic Li Shang-yin. Offering the largest selection of these poets’ work available in English in a translation that is a classic in its own right, Poems of the Late T’ang also includes Graham’s searching essay “The Translation of Chinese Poetry” as well as helpful notes on each of the poets and on many of the individual poems.

Classical Chinese Poetry

Classical Chinese Poetry
Author: David Hinton
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 597
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1466873221

“A magisterial book” of nearly five hundred poems from some of history’s greatest Chinese poets, translated and edited by a renowned poet and scholar (New Republic). The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature. This rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all 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 re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet’s work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poets. “David Hinton has . . . lured into English a new manner of hearing the great poets of that long glory of China’s classical age. His achievement is another echo of the original, and a gift to our language.” —W. S. Merwin

Chinese Through Poetry

Chinese Through Poetry
Author: Archie Barnes
Publisher: Writersprintshop
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Chinese language
ISBN: 9781904623519

This is the first book to approach the study of Classical Chinese through verse instead of prose. Script, grammar and vocabulary are taught from scratch. The work can be used as a first introduction to traditional literary Chinese by anyone with no knowledge of the language. It is also suitable as part of a course in Classical Chinese for private study with or without previous knowledge of Chinese. The exercises are progressive in that each is restricted to the vocabulary and grammar met so far. The book serves as an introduction to Chinese verse for its own sake. It will be of great interest to ethnic Chinese wishing to recover their cultural roots.

The Art of Chinese Poetry

The Art of Chinese Poetry
Author: James J. Y. Liu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 1966-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226486877

This concise introduction to Chinese poetry serves as a primer for English-speakers eager to expand their understanding and enjoyment of Chinese culture. James J. Y. Liu first examines the Chinese language as a medium of poetic expression and, contrary to the usual focus on the visual qualities of Chinese script, emphasizes the auditory effects of Chinese verse. He provides a succinct survey of Chinese poetry theory and concludes with his own view of poetry, based upon traditional Chinese concepts. "[This] books should be read by all those interested in Chinese poetry."—Achilles Fang, Poetry "[This is] a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Chinese poetry, lucidly presented in a way that will attract a wide audience, and offering an original synthesis of Chinese and Western views that will stimulate and inspire students of poetry everywhere."—Hans H. Frankel, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies "This is a book which can be recommended without reservation to anyone who wants to explore the world of Chinese poetry in translation."—James R. Hightower, Journal of Asian Studies

Chinese Poems for Students of Chinese

Chinese Poems for Students of Chinese
Author: Roger New
Publisher:
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2019-06-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781916109803

Summary This is a book to help students of Chinese increase their familiarity with Chinese culture and strengthen their command of the language. The book presents, in a unique format, 28 short couplets (5 character or 7 character cut-shorts) comprising Chinese poems all very well known to Chinese nationals. Explanatory notes for each poem are provided in English, and translations are given at the end of the book. This is an ideal textbook for both students and teachers wanting to incorporate Chinese poetry into their study curriculum. Blurb This is a book that every student of Chinese will want to buy. For the first time, Chinese poems are presented in an accessible form, with the characters, their pronunciation, and their English meaning all alongside each other, together with text in English providing insight on the poet, the cultural context and historical background for each one. English versions of all the poems are at the end of the book. Poems are an important part of Chinese culture, and the ones included here are some of the best known, studied by Chinese schoolchildren from an early age. For foreign students of Chinese, these poems present a unique opportunity to get to know the culture and to strengthen their command of the language at the same time. All of the poems here are classics, and their study provides an entry into Chinese literature far more readily than immersion in weighty novels. Each poem is short and easy to assimilate; memorising the poems, both to write and to declaim, helps to embed the characters in the mind, and to build up confidence in reading, writing and speaking the language. The poems are presented in such a way that the tools are available to understand each one, but the reader has the opportunity to come to their own conclusion as to the interpretation of the poem - in exactly the same way as an established scholar of Chinese might do. Reading a Chinese poem is a bit like solving a riddle, and indeed, the information and clues provided here are sufficient to allow even someone with no previous knowledge of Chinese to appreciate the beauty of these poems.