The Selected Poems of Li Po Read online

  58 Another kind of yüeh-fu, the traditional form for poems of social protest, which allows rather extreme metrical irregularities. As is often the case with T’ang Dynasty yüeh-fu, it is set in the Han Dynasty—a convention used when the poem was likely to offend those in power (here the protest would be against the expansionist militarism of the government). The speaker here is a soldier.

  HSIUNG-NU: war-like nomadic peoples occupying vast regions from Mongolia to Central Asia during the Han Dynasty. They were a constant menace on China’s northern frontier.

  60 CH’IN: see note for p. 28.

  61 SILKWORMS… SLEPT THREE TIMES: Silkworms, which feed on mulberry leaves, go through three or four cycles of feeding and sleeping each spring and summer before spinning their cocoons.

  68 HSIEH T’IAO: 5th-century poet remembered for his landscape poems.

  74 CHAO: A native Japanese, Chao went to China as a young man to complete his education. He remained there and rose to high office. In A.D. 753, he tried to return to Japan, but his ship was blown off course and wrecked. Chao survived, but when Li Po wrote this poem, it was apparently thought that he had perished.

  91 PHOENIX: The mythic phoenix appears only in times of peace and sagacious rule, which was certainly not the case during the An Lu-shan rebellion when this poem was written.

  WU… CHIN: The ancient kingdom of Wu and the Chin Dynasty both had their capitals at Chin-ling.

  93 HSIEH AN: One of Li Po’s favorite historical figures, Hsieh An (A.D. 320-385) lived as a scholar-recluse until the country’s difficulties required that he enter government service. North China had already fallen to invading “barbarians.” When their armies advanced on the south, Hsieh led an outnumbered Chinese army that repelled them, thereby saving China from being completely overrun.

  94 NORTHERN DIPPER… SOUTHERN WINNOW: constellations.

  95 KINSMAN: Li Yung, who was executed on trumped-up charges by Li Lin-fu, the notorious prime minister who was currently doing such damage to the country.

  97 9/9: the 9th day of the 9th month, a holiday celebrated by climbing to a mountaintop and drinking chrysanthemum wine, which was believed to enhance longevity.

  99 GEESE: traditionally associated with letters from loved ones far away.

  100 THREE GORGES: a set of three spectacular gorges formed where the Yangtze River cut its way through the formidable Wu Mountains, forming a two-hundred-mile stretch of very narrow canyons. Famous in Chinese poetry for the river’s violence and the towering cliffs alive with shrieking gibbons, travel through them was very dangerous. The three gorges are: Ch’ü-t’ang Gorge, which begins at Kuei-chou; Wu Gorge; and furthest downsteam, Huang-niu Gorge, the first Li Po would encounter on his journey upstream.

  101 SHUN: last emperor of China’s legendary Golden Age (regnant 2255-2208 B.C.). After his death, the world began to decline.

  109 BLACK OX … WHITE CRANE: animals the immortals typically rode in their celestial journeys.

  110 MOON-RABBIT: According to popular myth, there is a rabbit on the moon under a cinnamon tree. There it pounds a balm of immortality using, among other things, sap and bark from the tree.

  TIMELESS FU-SANG TREE: The sun is, also according to popular myth, ten crows— one for each day of the week. Each day, one sun-crow rises from the vast fu-sang (mulberry) tree in the far east. After setting, it waits in the tree’s branches until its turn to rise comes again, ten days later.

  123 SOUTH MOUNTAIN: see note for p. 52.

  FINDING LIST

  TEXTS:

  Li T’ai-po shih chi. Wang Chi, ed. 1759. SPPY (Chüan and page number).

  Li Po chi chiao chu. Ch’ü Shui-yüan, ed. 1980. (Page number; and for poems with multiple sections, section number in parenthesis).

  PAGE 1. Li T’ai-po

  shih chi 2. Li Po chi

  chiao chu

  3 23.10a 1355

  4 8.12a 566

  5 15.18a 941

  6 21.11a 1238

  8 20.12a 1180

  9 23.8a 1349

  10 3.28b 267

  11 30.11a 1715

  12 4.19a 326

  14 30.7b 1708

  15 15.15b 935

  16 25.11a 1465(11)

  17 5.12a 374(1,3)

  18 23.8a 1348

  19 25.1b 1438

  20 25.1la 1465(7,9)

  22 23.la 1325

  23 20.1a 1149

  24 20.1a 1150

  25 6.13a 455

  26 4.1a 279

  27 23.7b 1347

  28 23.7a 1345

  29 6.11a 448

  30 2.7b 110

  31 23.5a 1340

  32 19.2b 1095

  33 22.11a 1291

  34 22.11b 1292

  35 15.12b 928

  36 20.3a 1154(1)

  41 30.5b 1727(3)

  42 5.12a 374

  43 23.2b 1331(1-3)

  46 23.12b 1361

  47 25.11a 1465(5)

  48 3.19b 244

  49 20.9a 1170

  50 21.5a 1222

  51 24.21a 1422(1)

  52 22.11b 1293

  53 25.14b 1476

  54 30.4b 1700

  55 13.5b 836

  56 16.19a 988

  57 23.l0a 1354

  58 3.12a 222

  60 23.7b 1348

  61 13.13a 858

  63 23.1a 1326

  64 15.12b 928

  65 30.8b 1711

  66 17.19b 1042(3)

  67 23.10a 1354

  68 21.16b 1254

  69 22.21a 1316(3)

  70 22.21a 1316(10)

  71 18.13b 1077

  72 25.26b 1507

  73 24.19b 1416

  74 25.25a 1503

  75 20.19a 1198

  76 20.14b 1186

  78 8.1a 533 (1,5,6,8,9,

  10,11,12,

  13,14,15,

  17)

  85 20.14a 1183

  86 8.16b 579

  87 20.20b 1203

  91 21.9b 1234

  92 22.14b 1299(3)

  93 22.20b 1314

  94 24.2b 1373(6)

  5 25.5a 1447

  96 23.9a 1351

  97 20.22b 1207

  98 20.22b 1208

  99 25.23a 1497

  100 22.7a 1278

  101 22.7a 1278

  103 23.14b 1367

  104 22.8a 1280

  105 20.17b 1194(2,5)

  106 21.15a 1250

  107 21.15b 1251

  108 23.9b 1353

  109 23.9a 1350

  110 24.2b 1373(9)

  111 21.17a 1256

  112 23.9a 1352

  113 23.5b 1341

  115 23.5b 1341

  116 22.8b 1283

  117 18.1a 1047

  118 23.5a 1340

  119 24.23a 1427

  120 6.9b 443

  121 25.10b 1464

  122 24.19b 1416

  123 24.19a 1414

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alley, Rewi. Li Pai: 200 Selected Poems. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1980.

  Billeter, Jean Franois. The Chinese Art of Writing. New York: Rizzoli, 1990.

  Pages 192-195 of this book contain a color reproduction of the only surviving piece of calligraphy that can be attributed to Li Po, as well as a splendid stroke-by-stroke description of how Li Po’s character is revealed in his calligraphic art.

  Birch, Cyril. Anthology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

  Cheng, Franois. Chinenese Poetic Writing: With an Anthology of T’ang Poetry. Chinese trans. J. P. Seaton. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1982.

  Cooper, Arthur. Li Po and Tu Fu. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973.

  Eide, Elling. “On Li Po.” In Perspectives on the T’ang. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973.

  ————. Poems by Li Po. Lexington: Anvil Press, 1984.

  Hamill, Sam. Banished Immortal: Visions of Li T’ai-po. Fredonia: White Pine Press, 1987.

  Liu Wu-chi, and Irving Yucheng Lo. Su
nflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1975.

  Nienhauser, William. The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986.

  Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981.

  ————. Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

  Pound, Ezra. “Cathay.” In Person: The Shorter Poems. Revised edition. New York: New Directions, 1990.

  Seaton, J. P. and James Cryer. Bright Moon, Perching Bird: Poems by Li Po and Tu Fu. Middletown: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1987.

  Shigenyoshi, Obata. The Works of Li Po the Chinese Poet. New York: Dutton, 1922.

  T’ao Ch’ien. The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien. Trans. David Hinton. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1993.

  Tu Fu. The Selected Poems of Tu Fu. Trans. David Hinton. New York: New Directions, 1989.

  Waley, Arthur. The Poetry and Career of Li Po 701-762 A.D. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950.

  Watson, Burton. Chinese Lyricism. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971.

  —————. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1984.

  OTHER TRANSLATIONS BY

  DAVID HINTON

  The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-yün (New Directions)

  Tao Te Ching (Counterpoint)

  The Selected Poems of Po Chü-1 (New Directions)

  The Analects (Counterpoint)

  Mencius (Counterpoint)

  Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters (Counterpoint)

  The Late Poems of Meng Chiao (Princeton)

  Forms of Distance [poems by Bei Dao] (New Directions)

  Landscape Over Zero [poems by Bei Dao] (New Directions)

  The Selected Poems of Tao Chien (Copper Canyon)

  The Selected Poems of Tu Fu (New Directions)

  Copyright © 1996 by David Hinton

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The translation of this book was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Witter Bynner Foundation.

  Some of these poems first appeared in The American Poetry Review.

  First published as New Directions Paperbook 823 in 1996

  Book design and map by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Li Po, d701-762

  [Poems. English. Selections)

  The selected poems of Li Po translated by David Hinton.

  p. cm.

  “A New directions book.”

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-8112-2362-1 (e-book)

  1. Li, Po, d701-762—Translations into English. I. Hinton,

  David, 1954 - . II. Title.

  PL2671.A25 1996

  895.1’ 13—dc20

  96-5139

  CIP

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  By New Directions Publishing Corporation,

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011