The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry
Extending the work from the original 2001 volume, The Silk Dragon II then traces classical Chinese poetry's eruption into the free verse of the modern and contemporary eras, introducing groundbreaking poems by the Chinese Modernist master Wen Yiduo, as well as those from major living poets such as Wang Jiaxin, Zhai Yongming, and Xi Chuan. Through this remarkable journey--deepened by Sze's personal introduction--we see that the "impossible task" of translation is yet rich with encounter, as both long-lost voices and those still speaking enter the same conversation, with the same vivacity.
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"These delicate poems, charged with a sense of serenity that seems incredible to modern sensibilities, cast images of an almost mythic world--formal and austere, yet infused with the banked passion of 'red pomegranate wine.'" --Foreword"Among the most valuable aspects of this sensitively crafted collection is the introduction, in which Sze describes, in fascinating detail, his translation process, from the word clusters he creates for each Chinese ideogram to the finished poem." --Library Journal
"Read a dozen of these poems, and you'll start to notice a deeper meaning: a delicacy of feeling, an intensity of thought, a lyric strength in each short line. You think: There are riches here, pointing beyond the poems to something greater, to a power that passes through the world, binding the temporal to the eternal, soul to earth."--The Wichita Eagle
"The discovery of classic Chinese poetry has been one of the most important literary events in world literature in the twentieth century. Readers fell in love with it and poets were influenced. Over the last hundred years, there have been many translations into English, but only a few as fine as these. Arthur Sze is not only one of our best poets, he's now also one of our great translators."--Charles Simic"Make room on your book shelf for this moving collection of Chinese poetry. True to the title of the book, each poem is a miniature silk dragon, lustrous and magical in its beauty. Even specialists of Chinese poetry will have much to learn from it."--Michelle Yeh
