The Selected Poems of Tu Fu

Reviews

"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

"David Hinton is the best English-language translator of classical Chinese poetry we have, and have had for decades. A magician’s grace glows through all of the poems, a grace and ease uncommonly found,uncommonly masterful." — Citation from the Thornton Wilder Lifetime Achievement Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters)

"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

"Tu Fu is the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language." — Kenneth Rexroth