Tu Fu (712–770 C.E.) has for a millennium been widely considered the greatest poet in the Chinese tradition, and Hinton’s original translation played a key role in developing that reputation in America. Most of Tu Fu’s best poems were written in the last decade of his life, as an impoverished refugee fleeing the devastation of civil war. In the midst of these challenges, his always personal poems manage to combine a remarkable range of possibilities: elegant simplicity and great complexity, everyday life and grand historical drama, private philosophical depth and social engagement in a world consumed by war. Through it all, his is a wisdom that can only be called elemental, and his poems sound remarkably contemporary.
- ISBN10 081122838X
- ISBN13 9780811228381
- Publish Date 6 February 2020 (first published 13 September 1989)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Format Paperback
- Pages 288
- Language English