RRP: AUD $24.95 + p&p.
Singing of Scented Grass
verses from the Chinese
By
Ian Johnston.
ISBN: 0-9578436-3-1
A5 132pp
AUD $24.95 + p&p.
About
These elegant translations of the Tang poets, Wang Wei, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin, were first performed by John Unicomb during the inaugural Ten Days on the Island in 2001. Audiences at that event were entranced by the performance. Now the poems are available to a wider audience in this beautifully designed publication, which includes the Chinese text for most of the poems, and illustrations by the Chan school of painting, The Forest of Brushes, from Bruny Island. There is also a small section of the translator’s own poems written in response to his reading of the Confucian Analects.
Proudly published by Pardalote Press
Reviews
Singing of Scented Grass is a unique selection of Tang poetry by Wang Wei, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin, followed by the translator’s own poems that interrogate the Confucian ideal of aspiring to high political office…
Mabel Lee, University of Sydney
Despite the great gulf in time and culture I find a resonance in the writings of these poets, especially Wang Wei; the feeling of increasing disaffection with public life and sadness at the 'strange mutations' of the world, leading to the wish to spend my life in relative solitude, immersed in the beauties of nature, the writing of verse, and the study of Zen Buddhism.
Ian Johnston, translator
Extract
Within the gorges who knows of the affairs of men?
Within the city who gazes at clouds and mountains?Wang Wei