A compelling, detail-rich resource about Tang verse.
This primer on Tang dynasty–era poetry addresses Chinese history and linguistics and the tricky task of translation.
Retired surgeon Hung’s (The Chinese Language Demystified, 2018, etc.) overview of verse written during the Tang period, which lasted from 618 to 907, will be accessible to novices and a rich resource for experts. He takes a multipronged approach, beginning with a brief description of life in Tang China before delving into its literary traditions. It was a time of economic expansion that also saw an increase in artistic output. The book centers on three poets who were particularly prolific during the period: Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, who were each influential in their home country as well as abroad. Hung explains the nuances of classical Chinese characters, which were misinterpreted by prominent Western writers, such as Ezra Pound, to be mainly pictograms. His book aims to give non-Chinese readers the tools to appreciate the beauty of Tang poetry in their original characters as well as in their translations. Hung shows creativity in how he displays the authors’ poems; first, he presents them in calligraphy, then in Pinyin (romanized words, meant to represent the sound of each character) with literal translations of each line. Afterward, he provides examples of several different English translations of each poem. (At times, the book feels like an expanded meditation on Eliot Weinberger’s 1987 book 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei.) Readers will receive a new appreciation not just for Tang poetry, but also for the challenges of translating such verse. Not only is classical Chinese very different from modern Chinese, but translators also have to keep in mind rhythm, details, and images, not all of which will have direct English translations. With a keen eye for detail and extraordinary patience, Hung relates the nuances of producing and translating poetry. His explanations are aided by his thoughtful historical accounts of life in Tang China and his descriptions of the political and economic circumstances that marked each poet’s life.
A compelling, detail-rich resource about Tang verse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-04408-7
Page Count: 199
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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