Poems of the Late T'Ang

No other period in Chinese poetry has been richer in language and imagination than the last 100 years of the T'ang dynasty. This volume introduces seven poets, beginning with the last poems of China's greatest poet, Tu Fu and ending with Li Shang Yin, one of the first to make love his central theme. English readers weaned on the Chinese poets discovered by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and the Imagists will probably find there is less starkness and clarity and more shadow and mystery in the poets they are familiar with. The imagery in the poems is so elaborately individual and the poets' voices so distinctive that translation, although difficult, is exceptionally rewarding. This translation is accompanied by a full introduction and explanatory notes.