Category Books

Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women's Poems from Tang China »

Authors: Jeanne Larsen
ISBN-13: 9781929918737, ISBN-10: 1929918739
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Date Published: November 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Jeanne Larsen

Jeanne Larsen has published three novels set in China and has translations in many recent anthologies of traditional Chinese poetry. Her first book of poetry translation was Brocade River Poems: Selected Work of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao. She teaches in the creative writing program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Book Synopsis

Wine-house singers, empresses, angst-ridden wives, and broken-hearted nuns: poems from China's golden age.

	Song : wandering in spring	23
	An evening banquet as the year begins, wine cups floating past	24
	In the stony-torrents mountains	25
	Plaint : her beautiful letters	26
	from Twenty-five poems upon travelling to the changing princess's floating wine cup pond	27
	Declining a gift of pearls	32
	For my maidservant Zhang Yunrong, upon seeing her dance	33
	Written on a screen at empty-pond courier station	34
	Teasing Lu Chang, a bridesmaid from down south	35
	Poem rhyming with one by his majesty, written as ordered at a banquet in Linde Palace with a hundred colleagues	36
	Poem rhyming with one by his majesty, written at a banquet in Linde Palace with a hundred officials	37
	from The greenwall pilgrimage sequence	38
	Accompanying his majesty to the Greenwall Mountains, east of the Himalayas	46
	In a palace in Shu, written at his majesty's command	47
	Going fishing, getting nothing	48
	Palace lyrics	49
	Hearing music from a zither	55
	Clouds at the creek's mouth	57
	Bamboo at pond's edge	57
	Egrets on the shore	58
	A pair of autumn-blooming mallows	58
	After an old song	59
	In darkness, separation	60
	Mooring at Wuchang on mid-autumn festival night	61
	On declining to marry a prime minister's daughter	62
	Joining my husband on the long road to the capital	63
	On my husband's elevation to grand councilor : sent to my scornful sisters	63
	Advising my husband to broaden his political base	64
	As in olden times	65
	Willow Floss	66
	Bowing to the new moon	67
	My husband fails his exams again	68
	On hearing that my husband has passed his exams	68
	For young Miss Zheng	69
	Answering my husband, Yuan Zhen	71
	Self-portrait, sent to my husband	72
	Missing him : two poems	73
	In answer to my sisters, who want me to stop drinking	74
	Offered to the recluse Chen Tao	77
	For Madame Lu	78
	Poem sent far away	79
	Scent-of-delirium cave	81
	The pillow of the divine cock	81
	An incense-burner pillow	82
	Soup for a closed door	82
	Saying goodbye to Wu Buque	83
	Swallow tower : three poems	84
	Rhyming with a poem by Master Bo	85
	Sent to Ouyang Zhan	86
	On the pond, a pair of birds	87
	Love-duck herb	87
	Goldenlamp flowers	87
	Longing for litchis	88
	To General Gao, who smashed the rebellion for the son of heaven	88
	Rhyming with a poem given me by Secretary Li, at a banquet graced by courtesans like willows	88
	In response to Commissioner Wu	89
	Ah, let him come back to me	90
	Willow branches	92
	Nearing my end, and inviting guests	93
	Poem using the rhyme words of Li Biao's outrageous come-on	94
	Song	97
	On my sickbed by the lake, happy because Lu Hongjian has arrived	98
	Here by chance	98
	Parting on a night when the moon shines clear	99
	Sent to Zhu Fang	99
	The Tao and the path : thoughts sent to officiary Cui	100
	Practicing my heaven-organ	101
	Poem rhyming with Zhuo Yingying's "practicing my heaven-organ"	101
	Another poem on riverside willow trees	102
	Depression : two poems	103
	Struck by a mood at spring's end : sent to a friend	105
	Written on a wall of abundance temple, built by Hermit Ren	106
	Calling on the right reverend taoist mistress Zhao, who's not at home	107
	A summer day, a mountain home	108
	Springtime views in the land of Qin	109
	Hidden meaning / sexual alchemy	110
	Sent to my senior sisters in the Luoyang region	111
	Nighttime, aboard a boat, one text	112