Wai-lim Yip

I can’t pretend to have fully appreciated the poems collected here. They range across much of China’s long literary history. Wai-Lim Yip makes an impassioned case in his introduction for how to best translate the concrete imagery of these poems, drawing connections to what happened to English poetry in the modernist period. What is more interesting, however, is the way in which he displays his method of translation, first presenting the poem in traditional Chinese characters, then show more offering a rough transliteration often with meaning options, and finally presenting his finished translation which he believes best represents the meaning and metre of the original poem.

For the novice, probably a lengthy elucidation of each poem detailing its historical significance and connecting its image use with other poems would be especially helpful. But I suppose that is what a professor would be providing when using this text in a literature course. As it is, the poems are left to speak for themselves as it were. And in the end that also works.

I enjoyed this introduction to Chinese poetry and can gently recommend it to others. show less

Having the word for word transliteration and then a translation of each poem is interesting, It allows one to attempt one's own translations with some confidence of not completely butchering the original meaning/intent.

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