Download or read book Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom written by Sung Po-jen and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2013-06-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is one of the very first art books which helped artists develop the aptitude for seeing the inner essence of various natural phenomena."—Shambhala Sun "Red Pine introduces Western readers to both the text itself and the traditions it has inherited."—Virginia Quarterly Review Through a series of brief four-lined poems and illustrations, Sung Po-jen aims at training artistic perception: how to truly see a plum blossom. First published in AD 1238, Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom is considered the world's earliest-known printed art books. This bilingual edition contains the one hundred woodblock prints from the 1238 edition, calligraphic Chinese poems, and Red Pine's graceful translations and illuminating commentaries. "Tiger Tracks" winter wind bends dry grass flicks its tail along the ridge fearful force on the loose don't try to braid old whiskers Red Pine's commentary: "The Chinese liken the north wind that blows down from Siberia in winter to a roaring tiger. China is home to both the Siberian and the South China tigers. While both are on the verge of extinction, the small South China tiger still appears as far north as the Chungnan Mountains, where hermits have shown me their tracks." Sung Po-jen was a Chinese poet of the thirteenth century. Red Pine (a.k.a. Bill Porter) is one of the world's foremost translators of Chinese poetry and religious texts. His published translations include The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Lao-tzu's Taoteching, and Poems of the Masters. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
Download or read book Dancing with the Dead written by Red Pine and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential collection from the leading figure of Chinese poetry translation, presenting work of insight, humor, and musicality that continues to resonates across thousands of years. Red Pine is one of the world's finest translators of Chinese poetic and religious texts. His new anthology, Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine, gathers over thirty voices from the ancient Chinese past—including Buddhist poets Cold Mountain (Hanshan) and Stonehouse (Shiwu), as well as Tang-dynasty luminaries Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan. Dancing with the Dead also includes translations from such religious texts as Puming’s Oxherding Pictures and Verses and Lao-Tzu’s Daodejing, as well as poems and woodblock illustrations from Su Po-Jen’s Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, one of the world’s first printed books of art. Throughout the book, poems are accompanied by footnotes providing historical context, and each section includes a new and illuminating introduction chronicling Red Pine’s relationship to the poet—discovery, travel, scholarship. Dancing With The Dead is more than a book, it is a journey: part travel essay, part road map, part guided meditation. It is a history translated in poem. For Red Pine, “translating the words in a Chinese poem isn’t that hard, but finding the spirit that inspired those words, the music of the heart, and asking it to inspire [his heart], that is how, and why, [he] translates.” “our luggage is full of river travel poems may we ride forth together again.” – Wei Yingwu
Download or read book Five Kootenay Lake Poets written by Sheila Murray-Nellis and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five poets share their diverse perspectives of living on Kootenay Lake in the Purcell region of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Each poet's distinctive voice expresses his or her own reflections of life in the Kootenays, from the Coyote trickster to gardening to wildlife to politics to fairy tale images.
Download or read book Art by the Book written by J. P. Park and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometime before 1579, Zhou Lujing, a professional writer living in a bustling commercial town in southeastern China, published a series of lavishly illustrated books, which constituted the first multigenre painting manuals in Chinese history. Their popularity was immediate and their contents and format were widely reprinted and disseminated in a number of contemporary publications. Focusing on Zhou's work, Art by the Book describes how such publications accommodated the cultural taste and demands of the general public, and shows how painting manuals functioned as a form in which everything from icons of popular culture to graphic or literary cliche was presented to both gratify and shape the sensibilities of a growing reading public. As a special commodity of early modern China, when cultural standing was measured by a person's command of literati taste and lore, painting manuals provided nonelite readers with a device for enhancing social capital.
Download or read book Shambhala Sun written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Zen Baggage written by Bill Porter and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2006, Bill Porter traveled through the heart of China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, on a pilgrimage to sites associated with the first six patriarchs of Zen. Zen Baggage is an account of that journey. He weaves together historical background, interviews with Zen masters, and translations of the earliest known records of Zen, along with personal vignettes. Porter's account captures the transformations taking place at religious centers in China but also the abiding legacy they have somehow managed to preserve. Porter brings wisdom and humor to every situation, whether visiting ancient caves containing the most complete collection of Buddhist texts ever uncovered, enduring a six–hour Buddhist ceremony, searching in vain for the ghost in his room, waking up the monk in charge of martial arts at Shaolin Temple, or meeting the abbess of China's first Zen nunnery. Porter's previously published Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits has become recommended reading at Zen centers and universities throughout America and even in China (in its Chinese translation), and Zen Baggage is sure to follow suit.
Download or read book A House Called Tomorrow written by Michael Wiegers and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Copper Canyon Press celebrates its first 50 years of poetry publishing in anticipation of the next 50 years. Poetry is vital to language and living. This anthology celebrates 50 years of Copper Canyon Press publications, one extraordinary poem at a time. Since its founding, Copper Canyon has been entirely dedicated to publishing poetry books; here Editor in Chief Michael Wiegers invites press staff and board—past and present—to help curate a retrospective. The result is a collection of beloved poems from books spanning half a century: representing Pulitzer Prize-winning books, debut collections, works in translation, and rare books from Copper Canyon’s early days. This book is a tribute to Copper Canyon poets and readers everywhere, because, as Gregory Orr writes, “Certain poems / In an uncertain world— / The ones we cling to: // They bring us back.”
Download or read book The Diamond Sutra written by Red Pine and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful translation of the Diamond Sutra—with insightful commentary and helpful historical information for parsing this essential Zen Buddhist scripture Zen Buddhism is often said to be a practice of mind–to–mind transmission without reliance on texts—in fact, some great teachers forbid their students to read or write. But Buddhism has also inspired some of the greatest philosophical writings of any religion, and two such works lie at the center of Zen: The Heart Sutra, which monks recite all over the world, and The Diamond Sutra, said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism. This is the Buddhist teaching on the perfection of wisdom and cuts through all obstacles on the path of practice. As Red Pine explains: The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it’s really the body of the Buddha. It’s also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it’s a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn’t exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It’s no mind. And yet because it’s no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond.
Download or read book Lao tzu s Taoteching written by Lao Tzu and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and re-translated, Red Pine's best-selling and authoritative translation of Taoteching is now--vitally--available once again.
Download or read book In Such Hard Times written by Yingwu Wei and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents one hundred fifty poems in Chinese and English translation by a classic eighth-century Chinese poet little known in the West, with explanatory notes accompanying each one.
Download or read book Finding Them Gone written by Red Pine and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A travel writer with a cult following."—The New York Times "There are very few westerners who could successfully cover so much territory in China, but Porter pulls it off. Finding Them Gone uniquely draws upon his parallel careers as a translator and a travel writer in ways that his previous books have not. A lifetime devoted to understanding Chinese culture and spirituality blossoms within its pages to create something truly rare."—The Los Angeles Book Review To pay homage to China's greatest poets, renowned translator Bill Porter—who is also known by his Chinese name "Red Pine"—traveled throughout China visiting dozens of poets' graves and performing idiosyncratic rituals that featured Kentucky bourbon and reading poems aloud to the spirits. Combining travelogue, translations, history, and personal stories, this intimate and fast-paced tour of modern China celebrates inspirational landscapes and presents translations of classical poems, many of which have never before been translated into English. Porter is a former radio commentator based in Hong Kong who specialized in travelogues. As such, he is an entertaining storyteller who is deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture, both ancient and modern, who brings readers into the journey—from standing at the edge of the trash pit that used to be Tu Mu's grave to sitting in Han Shan's cave where the Buddhist hermit "Butterfly Woman" serves him tea. Illustrated with over one hundred photographs and two hundred poems, Finding Them Gone combines the love of travel with an irrepressible exuberance for poetry. As Porter writes: "The graves of the poets I'd been visiting were so different. Some were simple, some palatial, some had been plowed under by farmers, and others had been reduced to trash pits. Their poems, though, had survived... Poetry is transcendent. We carry it in our hearts and find it there when we have forgotten everything else." In praise of Bill Porter/Red Pine: "In the travel writing that has made him so popular in China, Porter's tone is not reverential but explanatory, and filled with luminous asides... His goal is to tell interested foreigners about revealing byways of Chinese culture."—New York Review of Books “Porter is an amiable and knowledgeable guide. The daily entries themselves fit squarely in the travelogue genre, seamlessly combining the details of his routes and encounters with the poets’ biographies, Chinese histories, and a generous helping of the poetry itself. Porter’s knowledge of the subject and his curation of the poems make this book well worth reading for travelers and poetry readers alike. It’s like a survey course in Chinese poetry—but one in which the readings are excellent, the professor doesn’t take himself too seriously, and the field trips involve sharing Stagg bourbon with the deceased.”—Publishers Weekly "Red Pine's out-of-the-mainstream work is canny and clearheaded, and it has immeasurably enhanced Zen/Taoist literature and practice."—Kyoto Journal "Bill Porter has been one of the most prolific translators of Chinese texts, while also developing into a travel writer with a cult following."—The New York Times "Red Pine's succinct and informative notes for each poem are core samples of the cultural, political, and literary history of China." —Asian Reporter Poets’ graves visited (partial list): Li Pai, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p’o, Hsueh T’ao, Chia Tao, Wei Ying-wu, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Han-shan (Cold Mountain). Bill Porter (a.k.a. "Red Pine") is widely recognized as one of the world's finest translators of Chinese religious and poetic texts. His best-selling books include Lao-tzu's Taoteching and The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He lives near Seattle.
Download or read book Written in Exile written by Liu Tsung-yuan and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a failed push for political reform, the T’ang era’s greatest prose-writer, Liu Tsung-yuan, was exiled to the southern reaches of China. Thousands of miles from home and freed from the strictures of court bureaucracy, he turned his gaze inward and chronicled his estrangement in poems. Liu’s fame as a prose writer, however, overshadowed his accomplishment as a poet. Three hundred years after Liu died, the poet Su Tung-p’o ranked him as one of the greatest poets of the T’ang, along with Tu Fu, Li Pai, and Wei Ying-wu. And yet Liu is unknown in the West, with fewer than a dozen poems published in English translation. The renowned translator Red Pine discovered Liu’s poetry during his travels throughout China and was compelled to translate 140 of the 146 poems attributed to Liu. As Red Pine writes, “I was captivated by the man and by how he came to write what he did.” Appended with thoroughly researched notes, an in-depth introduction, and the Chinese originals, Written in Exile presents the long-overdue introduction of a legendary T’ang poet.
Download or read book written by Hanshan and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative, bilingual edition represents the first time the entirety of Cold Mountain's poetry has been translated into English. These translations were originally published by Copper Canyon Press nearly twenty years ago. Now, significantly revised and expanded, the collection also includes a new preface by the translator, Red Pine, whose accompanying notes are at once scholarly, accessible, and entertaining. Also included for the first time are poems by two of Cold Mountain's colleagues. Legendary for his clarity, directness, and lack of pretension, the eight-century hermit-poet Cold Mountain (Han Shan) is a major figure in the history of Chinese literature and has been a profound influence on writers and readers worldwide. Writers such as Charles Frazier and Gary Snyder studied his poetry, and Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums is dedicated "to Han Shan." 1.B storied cliffs were the fortune I cast bird trails beyond human tracks what surrounds my yard white clouds nesting dark rocks I've lived here quite a few years and always seen the spring-water change tell those people with tripods and bells empty names are no damn good 71. someone sits in a mountain gorge cloud robe sunset tassels handful of fragrances he'd share the road is long and hard regretful and doubtful old and unaccomplished the crowd calls him crippled he stands alone steadfast 205. my place is on Cold Mountain perched on a cliff beyond the circuit of affliction images leave no trace when they vanish I roam the whole galaxy from here lights and shadows flash across my mind not one dharma comes before me since I found the magic pearl I can go anywhere everywhere it's perfect Cold Mountain A mountain man lives under thatch before his gate carts and horses are rare the forest is quiet but partial to birds the streams are wide and home to fish with his son he picks wild fruit with his wife he hoes between rocks what does he have at home a shelf full of nothing but books
Download or read book The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse written by Stonehouse and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bilingual Chinese-English volume of mountain poems from a Zen master.
Download or read book Road to Heaven written by Red Pine and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-08-10 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, Bill Porter, having spent much of his life studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts, began to wonder if the Buddhist hermit tradition still existed in China. At the time, it was believed that the Cultural Revolution had dealt a lethal blow to all religions in China, destroying countless temples and shrines, and forcibly returning thousands of monks and nuns to a lay life. But when Porter travels to the Chungnan mountains — the historical refuge of ancient hermits — he discovers that the hermit tradition is very much alive, as dozens of monks and nuns continue to lead solitary lives in quiet contemplation of their faith deep in the mountains. Part travelogue, part history, part sociology, and part religious study, this record of extraordinary journeys to an unknown China sheds light on a phenomenon unparalleled in the West. Porter's discovery is more than a revelation, and uncovers the glimmer of hope for the future of religion in China.
Download or read book Choosing to Be Simple written by Tao Yuanming and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navigating the uncertainty of a divided China wracked by warfare and corruption, Tao Yuanming’s poetry—expertly translated by Red Pine—chooses the path walked by China’s ancient sages, finding joy in living a simple life. The latest work in Red Pine’s rich career of translation, Choosing to be Simple: Collected Poems of Tao Yuanming, is a definitive portrait of the early Chinese politician and poet. Thoroughly researched and beautifully translated, this bilingual collection of over 160 verses chronicles Tao Yuanming’s path from civil servant to reclusive poet during the formative Six Dynasties period (220–589). Familiar scenes like farming and contemplating the nature of work and writing are examined with intimate honesty. As Red Pine illuminates Tao Yuanming’s sensitive voice, we find the poet’s solace and sorrow in a China transformed by modernity. Tao Yuanming’s distinct verse shows a keen attention to rhythm as he explores the tension of scarcity and indulgence, duty and escape. Reverberating with clarity and sincerity and laced with humor, the poems of Choosing to Be Simple portray a man’s timeless desire to live by the principles enshrined by China’s sages. Guided by Tao Yuanming’s own wonderment, we, too, find ourselves asking: “Why did I ever question my heart”? We are encouraged to find joy in simplicity—the tending of a garden, the sharing of wine with a stranger.
Download or read book written by Boren Song and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom aims not at technical artistic training but at the training of artistic perception: not how to hold a brush but rather how to really see a plum blossom. First published in A.D. 1238, Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom may be the world's first printed book of art and literature; it is presented here in a fine bilingual edition. Red Pine's delicate, graceful, and learned translation of the historic Confucian work is the first ever into English.
