Lovely collection of poems from a time that Britain calls the dark ages because so few written records survived from the other end of Eurasia. Wang Wei was particularly good at capturing small details of scenes - the way a canoe's paddle moves through the water, or subtle changes in a town with the seasons - but he must also have taken great joy in people because another rich seam in this collection is poems of farewell, greeting, and missing people in between. ( )

Lovely collection of poems from a time that Britain calls the dark ages because so few written records survived from the other end of Eurasia. Wang Wei was particularly good at capturing small details of scenes - the way a canoe's paddle moves through the water, or subtle changes in a town with the seasons - but he must also have taken great joy in people because another rich seam in this collection is poems of farewell, greeting, and missing people in between. ( )

I usually do not read poetry in translation, unless (a)it's a narrative poem or (b)it's translated by a poet who has essentially recreated the poem, rather than faithfully translating word by word. In my opinion, poetry owes its beauty to the cadence of the language, a kind of rhythmic beat as the words trip over one another, which is well nigh impossible to achieve in translation. However, I bought this book against my better judgement because it was going dirt cheap at a garage sale, and I felt the need to expand my reading horizon to ancient China.

Well, I should have listened to my judgement, as the poems fell flat with me. Wang Wei seems to be a nature poet, and all his poems are full of descriptions of the landscape. No doubt they would be beautiful in the original Chinese, but in English they seemed repetitive and uninteresting.

My review is not a judgement on the book, author or translator: it is just my reading experience based on my personal preferences.

I am not rating the book, as I do not feel qualified to do so.

With most simple words
the poet reaches upwards
to seize a bright star. ( )