Excursions in Poetry
Chinese Poems
Glimpses of a Virtuoso Tradition
E Bruce Brooks and A Taeko Brooks
The repertoire of classical Chinese poetry, the Shr, contains a few more than 300 poems. The most popular anthology of Tang poetry contains a few more than 300 poems. This book, covering the period from the classical age to the Mongol or Ywaen Dynasty, contains a few more than 300 poems - complemented by 60 prose pieces, from sayings of Confucius to tales told in the fashionable world of the demimonde. Each piece has an explanatory headnote, and the poems are rendered so as to preserve, as far as possible, the original rhyme and meter. Together, they are meant to suggest the development of Chinese feeling and historical awareness over those eighteen hundred years, and the close relation between late and early poets. This literary connectedness is what is meant by "virtuoso tradition."
Here, as previews, are a few poets and others - some famous, some less so, but all part of the picture.
Contents
Front Matter
