The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

I absolutely love this collection of beautifully immersive verses. One I will definitely return to time and again.

Bilingual edition with Chinese calligraphic text on the left-hand page and very good English translations on the facing right-hand page. These poems have deeply influenced Seamus Heany's works and that is how I came to know them. The translation presented in this edition is a very fine work in itself, done by a poetic scholar of Cold Mountain who lived and followed the traces of the poet in China for many years. Each poem is 8 lines in length and there are 307 of them all of which are copiously annotated with very detailed footnotes on the left-hand page under the Chinese text. Also included are 49 poems by his colleague (Shih-te) and 4 by (Feng-kan) This edition also includes several photos of the places where the poet lived and worked and a graphic map of China of the time of the poet. Many of these poems are little gems of insight and wit or of sarcasm and bitter irony. They are like seeds, seminal works which I think caused Seamus Heany's mind to take off in poetic flight. They may do the same for any serious poet who discovers them.

Another great translation by red pine, I absolutely love it, all of red pines books have lovely smooth covers, very tactile. Highly recommended, red pine is a brilliant translator of Taoist, and Chinese Buddhist works, with plenty of commentary, and foot notes, makes the translations so much easy to understand.

Amazing

A very thorough translation with the original characters and editors notes on left page and the poems on the right. I prefer Ryokan's poetry, as he is purely Buddhist whereas Cold mountain refers to both Buddhist and Taoist ideas. Still very pleasing and sometimes thought provoking. Worth the read.

This is a beautiful collection of poems by award winning translator Red Pine (b. 1943). Indeed this collection itself won the WESTAF Award in Translation in the year 2000. This work contains, in a bilingual edition, the collected poems of Cold Mountain (Han-shan) and his friends Big Stick (Feng-kan) and Pick Up (Shih-te), who are believed to have flourished during the Tang Dynasty (approx. 9th Century). All the poems are well annotated and there is an interesting translator's preface, in addition to which the author has provided photos of the area in which Cold Mountain lived. There is also a fine introduction by John Blofeld (1913-1987). "More than anyone else, Red Pine has made [Han Shan's] spontaneous poems accessible to Western readers.... In this new, expanded edition, invaluable notes and an extensive new critical preface provide a contextual awareness, not just for the poems, but for their sources in Buddhist and Confucian culture." -Inquiring Mind "An exquisite publication.... On every level this is a beautiful book." -Judges' statement when awarding Red Pine the "2000 Western States Book Award in Translation" for the Collected Songs of Cold Mountain "Red Pine...has given us the first full collection of Han Shan's songs in an idiom that is clear, graceful, and neutral enough to last.... His translations are accurate and mirror the music of the originals.... The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain is a considerable performance and a truly valuable book. Thanks to Copper Canyon's high standards of bookmaking, it is beautiful to hold and behold; thanks to Red Pine's care, it will survive as the definitive text of Han Shan in English for many years. It belongs on the shelf of everyone with an interest in poetry and...should be opened often." -Gregory McNamee, The Bloomsbury Review Also of interest may be Red Pine's translation of The Zen Works of Stonehouse .

Everything is in the title, really. If you hesitate between Henricks' and Red Pine's versions, maybe what follows will help you : Hanshan by Red Pine is really easy to read, it is quite a pleasure to have it in your hands, and there are pictures of Hanshan's cave, something you can't find anywhere else. The translation by Henricks is far less seductive, but the introduction, contrary to Red Pine's, is a real academic work.

This book is the most comprehensive collection to date of the poems of Han-shan, or Hanshan, or Cold Mountain. There is a lengthy and well-researched introduction by Red Pine (Bill Porter) in which he examines the origins of these poems. Hanshan was a wandering poet-monk of 7th to 9th Century China who lived in the mountains and wrote poems on the walls of caves. It now seems unlikely that all the poems were written by one person, but the large time-span suggests several poets who were sympathetic to the original man. Part of the attraction of these poems in the illusiveness of the author or authors. Who was this Zen Saint? Red Pine's notes on each poem are excellent - they give historical and literary context, and allow even the novice to access these beautiful pieces of poetry. If you live in the city and cannot escape, this books allows to slip away for a few minutes at least.

In this book of translations by 'Red Pine' (Bill Porter) of the Tang Dynasty collection of poetry attributed mostly to 'Han Shan' or 'Cold Mountain' [some are also attributed to two other figures closely associated with him] not only are there translations of the quality one would expect of 'Red Pine' and notes explaining/ clarifying allusions but also on the facing page the Chinese text. Further, I think Porter's comments about Han Shan's life, his poetry and information about what was generally accepted as the requirements for great Chinese poetry at the time are tremendously helpful - things much like what in English when I was in school were called 'prosody' {requirements for which syllables were to be accented, which not, what kinds of rhymes were acceptable, which perhaps not, etc. for a 'proper poem' in certain metric forms of English poetry - perhaps it might not be too great a distortion to compare to the 'rules' for the tennis game Robert Frost implied in his image that free verse was like 'playing tennis without a net'}. This is very much to the point in understanding some comments in Han Shan's poetry about his poetry and also in understanding some important points about the Chinese in which he wrote his poems (as well as being of interest to someone interested in classical Chinese poetry in general). Han Shan apparently 'suffered' from an inability to distinguish certain tonal differences required to write according to the accepted norms (I do not think this means he was like a foreigner from a non-tonal language like English when first learning Mandarin, for example, who may tend not to use or understand tones correctly - English has tones but not as part of important information about what word is being spoken}. This 'disability' of Han Shan's caused his poetry to be rather unconventional to the degree a number of critics would have refused to even consider it as poetry, yet his poetry it seems has always been appreciated even by a number of contemporaries honoured for their own poetry. This is one of the books I am especially delighted to have in my library. A copy from a lending library would not satisfy the wish to have something like this always available to hand.

Une bien belle édition du pseudo-moine fou mais authentique poète et l'un des plus grands de la Chine ancienne. On peut s'interroger sur certains parti-pris romantiques du traducteur. Au regard du texte chinois, il semble qu'une version plus sèche pourrait imposer de manière plus flagrante encore le génie souverain, et tellement moderne, de l'irascible Han Shan. En l'état, un livre de chevet.

This is a beautiful edition from Copper Canyon Press of the poems of Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and a few poems of two of his companions. Han Shan was a medieval Chinese poet, often considered part of the Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist tradition. In my opinion he owes more to the Taoists, but gets his morality from the Buddhists, and morality is the subject of a lot of the poems. He is often classified as a wilderness poet, but he is more of a satirist. Many of his poems are scathing denunciations of society, including Buddhist and Taoist religious society. The poems are short, but the book is long, containing 307 poems by Han Shan, 49 by Shih Te, and four by Feng Kan. Han Shan's style is simple and straightforward, lyrical at times and rhetorical, even invective, at others. For a wilderness poet, it doesn't demonstrate love of nature so much as love of simple living. For a religious poet, he is remarkably non-pious. He also has a sense of humor, which tempers his satire. Like much Chinese poetry, his is very allusive, which makes Red Pine's footnotes most helpful. The translation is line by line, sticking close to the original (as far as my limited Chinese could detect from the Chinese text on facing pages). Red Pine's style is clear and concise, without affectations. Han Shan is considered (at least by Americans) as a classic Zen poet, but to my ear he lacks the heavy symbolism and deliberate mystification I often associate with Zen poetics. I appreciate his freshness, vigor, humor, and austere advice.

Bel libro di poesie di un uomo che ha vissuto a lungo nel silenzio della vita religiosa e a contatto con la natura. Di solito do 4 stelle a Red Pine ma qui mi sento di darne 5 perché è un buon testo e per l'impegno profuso nel far conoscere queste perle a noi "occidentali"

just what I was lookin for