The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

A member of the intellectual class and a government official by profession, Wang Wei (A.D. 701– 761) became one of China's greatest classical poets and painters, alongside Li Po and Tu Fu (both of whom Hinton has also translated). This selection arranges in roughly chronological order 80 short poems (only a few are longer than a page). Characterized by Zen-like calm, acceptance of the changing world and careful observation of nature, these poems make big, though quiet, cognitive jumps and move with a stirring inevitability. Setting the poems in neat couplets, Hinton's fluid translation renders, with an ease befitting the poems' themes, meditations on old age ("No one's ever changed white hair back:/ might as well try conjuring yellow gold"), observations on the rhythms of agricultural life ("It's the farming season. No idleness now:/ families pour out to work southern fields") and metaphysical ruminations ("My dear friend nowhere in sight,/ this Han River keeps flowing east.// Now, if I look for old masters here,/ I find empty rivers and mountains"). This book is full of subtle delights. (June 28)