Broad sea and empty sky
Subtitle: China's first great modern poet, Xu Zhimo
By: Dorothy Trench Bonett
Contributors: Bonett, Dorothy Trench, translator, writer of supplementary textual content
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Floating World Editions
Published: 2021
Place of publication: Warren, CT
Language: eng
Number of pages: 213
ISBN-13: 9781891640988
Copyright date: 2020
Subjects: Translations; Chinese poetry
Description: "Xu Zhimo (1897-1931) was China's first great modern poet and a major figure of the intellectual revolution that shaped modern China. He was educated in China and abroad, including at King's College, Cambridge; his poem about leaving that beloved school is known by practically every Chinese, and each year hundreds of thousands of them make the pilgrimage to the memorial and garden established there in his honor. A world traveler who lived a short life during tumultuous times, he was in contact with every major Chinese literary figure of his day, and met and was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore, Thomas Hardy, Katherine Mansfield, and Bertrand Russell, among others. Xu fused elements of foreign poetic styles with native Chinese traditions to create a body of work that spoke to his contemporaries at a critical time in their history, and still speaks today. This book presents the largest selection of Xu’s poems available in English, as well as excerpts from some of his prose works. Essays and commentary put the poet in context for English-speaking readers and reveal links between his works and other modern poetry, both Chinese and non-Chinese."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The earliest poem; title: Vignettes (Brush sketches); title: The Ancient Tribe of Hua; title: Love; title: A night in Florence; title: Grief; title: Clouds in your western sky; title: Broad sea and empty sky; title: Singers and Heroes; title: Prose and talks; title: Xu as translator.