Sonnet-sequences have a history of nearly 1,000 years. But a sequence of villanelles? Here, perhaps for the first time ever in English, is a suite of twenty-four of them. The delicate instrument of the villanelle is played, lightly and gently, to salute Tao Yuanming, Chinese poet, Daoist, recluse, and a great Lord of Wine, who lived more than 1,500 years ago.
"In these beautiful, lucid poems, Richard Berengarten exploits the scope of the villanelle in a profound engagement with nature and mortality, in which past, present and future voices resonate across East and West. Accompanied by 'old friends', he fills the wine jug and considers existential realities of love and loss, imagination and creativity, where his thought and form are testimony to a life-long intimacy with Daoism and the I Ching." -Lucy Hamilton
"Poetry inspired by wine is almost a genre in Chinese literature. The Chinese pastoral poet Tao Yuanming (365?-427) pioneers what may be called 'alcoholyricism'. Berengarten's drinking songs are not just a fitting tribute to and admirable emulation of Tao Yuanming's poetic theme and art, but their evocation of idyllic rural scenes and deep reflections on humanity's relation to nature entitles him to be called a Tao Yuanming in English garb." -Ming Dong Gu
"There is an elegiac if not valedictory tone abroad and at home in these beautiful poems. We are in the aural territory of an ageing song-bird - the most musical of our older poets - gathering his forces to sing, like Shake-speare's lark, at heaven's gate. He is our host and guest, as we age along with him." -Anthony Rudolf
Sprache
Verlagsort
Maße
Höhe: 216 mm
Breite: 140 mm
Dicke: 2 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-84861-850-3 (9781848618503)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Richard Berengarten (Li Dao, b. London 1943) is an English poet whose writings have been translated into more than 100 languages. His poetic mosaic Changing (2016) is in part a homage to the I Ching, This work has been greeted as a leading contribution to the ongoing dialogue between ancient Chinese thought and 21st century poetry and poetics. Ten volumes of RB's selected writings have been published by Shearsman Books, including For the Living (Selected Longer Poems, 1966-2000), The Manager, The Blue Butterfly, In a Time of Drought, Balkan Light, Manual, and Notness. In the Shearsman chapbook series, his Imagems (1) and (2) are parts of an accumulating series of statements on poetics.
RB is a dedicated internationalist. He has lived in Italy, Greece, the USA and former Yugoslavia, and has enjoyed visits to China, including international poetry events in Chengdu, Xichang, Luzhou and Gulangyu, as well as India, Japan and Russia. His distinctions include PEN Slovenia Guest-of-Honour (2020), the Xu Zhimo Silver Willow Award (2017), the Manada Prize (Macedonia, 2011), Freeman of the City of Kragujevac (Serbia, 2010), Poet-in-Residence at the Dante/Eliot Conference (Florence, 2008), the Morava Charter Prize (Serbia, 2005), the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Award (1992), the Yeats Club Prize (1989), the Keats Poetry Prize (1974), and an Eric Gregory Award (1972). In 1975, he founded the now-legendary international Cambridge Poetry Festival, and in 2015 he was one of the co-ordinators of the first Xu Zhimo Festival. He publishes widely on the Internet, and with the Italian poet Silvia Pio, he has launched the Albero Project (2017) a site dedicated to poetry and ecology, based on his long poem 'Tree' (1980).
RB's writings have received wide international acclaim. Dozens of essays have appeared about his work, for example in the collections Richard Berengarten: A Critical Companion (2011, 2016), Managing THE MANAGER (2018), and The Book of CHANGING (2022-23). He lives in Cambridge, where he is a Bye-Fellow at Downing College and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College. He is also an adviser to the Pari Center (Tuscany). His voice and poems are recorded online on the Poetry Archive : https://poetryarchive.org/.
