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“By petal, by word, by image Sze reveals the translator’s craft: he uncovers the raw spirit and linguistic skill of the poem in Chinese, and then years and a few continents later he reassembles the poem tenderly into another language, another time. The poems are exquisite.” —Judges’ citation, Western States Book Award for Translation “These delicate poems, charged with a sense of serenity that seems incredible to modern sensibilities, cast images of an almost mythic world—formal and austere, yet infused with the banked passion of ‘red pomegranate wine.'” —Foreword “Among the most valuable aspects of this sensitively crafted collection is the introduction, in which Sze describes, in fascinating detail, his translation process, from the word clusters he creates for each Chinese ideogram to the finished poem.” —Library Journal “Read a dozen of these poems, and you’ll start to notice a deeper meaning: a delicacy of feeling, an intensity of thought, a lyric strength in each short line. You think: There are riches here, pointing beyond the poems to something greater, to a power that passes through the world, binding the temporal to the eternal, soul to earth.”—The Wichita Eagle “The discovery of classic Chinese poetry has been one of the most important literary events in world literature in the twentieth century. Readers fell in love with it and poets were influenced. Over the last hundred years, there have been many translations into English, but only a few as fine as these. Arthur Sze is not only one of our best poets, he’s now also one of our great translators.”—Charles Simic “Make room on your book shelf for this moving collection of Chinese poetry. True to the title of the book, each poem is a miniature silk dragon, lustrous and magical in its beauty. Even specialists of Chinese poetry will have much to learn from it.”—Michelle Yeh

"""Exhilarating . . . less sequel than elaboration, a widening of its predecessor’s lens.""—David Ulin, Alta ""A great collection to pick up as a first exploration of Chinese poetry. . . . Allows the reader to glimpse how many changes in Chinese poetry have occurred over time. You can also see the motifs and references that repeat. And [Arthur Sze] has these wonderful introductory essays and notes that are really great for giving you context on these selections and why these poems are important to him.""—Anne Ling Kaye, CBC Radio “Sze, in his clearwater and efficient translations, in his supple introductions and notes, is a brilliant guide to one of the world’s greatest poetry traditions. A tradition of clarity and nuance and moonlight.”—Jesse Nathan, Poetry Society of America ""In these lucid translations, Sze offers pleasures for all types of readers, those who want another taste of ancient favorites like Du Fu ('The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain') and Li He ('I will cut off the dragon’s feet / and chew the dragon’s flesh'), those new to Chinese poetry (his candid account of one poem’s tortuous process remains the best introduction to the art of Chinese translation that I know of), and those who admire Sze’s own work for its telling specificities, as in Wen Yiduo ('I feed the fire cobwebs, rat droppings, and also the scaly skins of spotted snakes'), and its prismatic finesse, as in Xi Chuan ('The figures acquire the mountains / and waters, just as the mountains acquire the emerald and lapis').""—David Woo, Lit Hub ""A welcome volume to enter our own republic of letters at a fraught time of acerbic mutual misunderstanding in the political realm. Alexis de Tocqueville taught us about democracy. Perhaps the Tang Dynasty can teach us manners within the body politic, if only by instructing us in the art of reflection. This book is a balm to apply to the suppurating wound, self-inflicted and visited on others alike, of permanent discord, as we strive (some of us), impossibly it seems, for comity.""—Johnny Payne, Merion West “By petal, by word, by image Sze reveals the translator’s craft: he uncovers the raw spirit and linguistic skill of the poem in Chinese, and then years and a few continents later he reassembles the poem tenderly into another language, another time. The poems are exquisite.” —Judges’ citation, Western States Book Award for Translation “These delicate poems, charged with a sense of serenity that seems incredible to modern sensibilities, cast images of an almost mythic world—formal and austere, yet infused with the banked passion of ‘red pomegranate wine.'” —Foreword “Among the most valuable aspects of this sensitively crafted collection is the introduction, in which Sze describes, in fascinating detail, his translation process, from the word clusters he creates for each Chinese ideogram to the finished poem.” —Library Journal “Read a dozen of these poems, and you’ll start to notice a deeper meaning: a delicacy of feeling, an intensity of thought, a lyric strength in each short line. You think: There are riches here, pointing beyond the poems to something greater, to a power that passes through the world, binding the temporal to the eternal, soul to earth.”—The Wichita Eagle “The discovery of classic Chinese poetry has been one of the most important literary events in world literature in the twentieth century. Readers fell in love with it and poets were influenced. Over the last hundred years, there have been many translations into English, but only a few as fine as these. Arthur Sze is not only one of our best poets, he’s now also one of our great translators.”—Charles Simic “Make room on your book shelf for this moving collection of Chinese poetry. True to the title of the book, each poem is a miniature silk dragon, lustrous and magical in its beauty. Even specialists of Chinese poetry will have much to learn from it.”—Michelle Yeh"

Author Information

Arthur Sze (he/him) is an award-winning poet, translator, and editor who has published eleven books of original poetry. His works have been translated into fourteen languages, and include The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021); Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and, Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His book of translations, The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (2001), was selected for the Western States Book Award. A recipient of the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, Sze has also been awarded support from the Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and National Endowment of the Arts. A Chancellor Emeritus at the Academy of American Poets, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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