The Selected Poems of Tu Fu

Tu Fu

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Hinton’s translation of The Late Poems of Wang An-shih is one of my favorite books of poetry, period, so when I saw that New Directions would be releasing a new edition of Hinton’s translations of Tu Fu, I knew I wanted to read it. Tu Fu’s poems arrive in soft, elemental couplets, serene and powerful. Hinton’s language register is fluid, simple, vivid, and elegant. I also find his language to be remarkably timeless and precise. In “Plum Rains,” “All day long, dragons delight: swells coil/and surge into banks, then startle back out”—so visceral and reptilian are these sensations that I imagine sharing the same Autumn rainy sky with Tu Fu. I texted the husband the following couplet from the poem “Out in the Boat,” to urge him to take me canoeing before it gets too cold: “Today, my wife and I climb into a little river-boat. Drifting,/skies clear, we watch our kids play in such crystalline water.” In the images of this vivid verse, I see Tu Fu’s life—as a refugee, as a Buddhist, as a devoted family member.

— Gina Balibrera Amyx, Literati Bookstore

A new and substantially expanded version of Hinton’s landmark translation of Tu Fu, published on the thirtieth anniversary of that original edition
Shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize

The Selected Poems of Tu Fu

Poetry by Tu Fu

Translated by David Hinton

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:

Leaving the City

It’s bone-bitter cold, and late, and falling
frost traces my gaze all bottomless skies.

Smoke trails out over distant salt mines.
Snow-covered peaks slant shadows east.

Armies haunt my homeland still, and war
drums throb in this far-off place. A guest

overnight here in this river city, I return
again to shrieking crows, my old friends.

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Paperback(published Feb, 25 2020)

ISBN
9780811228381
Price US
18.95
Trim Size
6x9
Page Count
288

Ebook

ISBN
9780811224062
Portrait of Tu Fu

Tu Fu

8th century Chinese poet

Hinton’s translation of The Late Poems of Wang An-shih is one of my favorite books of poetry, period, so when I saw that New Directions would be releasing a new edition of Hinton’s translations of Tu Fu, I knew I wanted to read it. Tu Fu’s poems arrive in soft, elemental couplets, serene and powerful. Hinton’s language register is fluid, simple, vivid, and elegant. I also find his language to be remarkably timeless and precise. In “Plum Rains,” “All day long, dragons delight: swells coil/and surge into banks, then startle back out”—so visceral and reptilian are these sensations that I imagine sharing the same Autumn rainy sky with Tu Fu. I texted the husband the following couplet from the poem “Out in the Boat,” to urge him to take me canoeing before it gets too cold: “Today, my wife and I climb into a little river-boat. Drifting,/skies clear, we watch our kids play in such crystalline water.” In the images of this vivid verse, I see Tu Fu’s life—as a refugee, as a Buddhist, as a devoted family member.

— Gina Balibrera Amyx, Literati Bookstore

Hinton’s austerely beautiful translations assume that Chinese classical poetry cannot be severed from philosophy. His translations have always gone against the grain. He has been building, translation by translation, an English language for a Chinese conceptual world. His versions get closest to what makes Du Fu sublime for Chinese readers.

— Madeleine Thien, New York Review of Books

The greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language.

— Kenneth Rexroth

Tu Fu said ‘A poet’s ideas are noble and simple.’ But Tu Fu does not seem so simple to us. His richly-layered work is well represented in these crisp translations. The background notes are invaluable. One of the world’s finest poets is made available here.

— Gary Snyder

The greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language.

— Kenneth Rexroth