How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology Book

Since I have a working knowledge of Chinese and
Japanese, I used to compare the original Chinese
text to the translation of any Chinese poetry that
I was reading. I often felt something was lacking in
the translation since the sources for the Chinese texts
were generally included accompanying aids, like
annotations, commentaries, background information
on the poem and author, plus a paraphrase in modern
Chinese or Japanese. Most Chinese or Japanese collections
of Chinese poems are like the well-known study aids
Cliff Notes with all kinds of helpful information for
understanding poems.

This "guided" anthology, edited by Professor Zong-Qi Cai
is a collection of essays by experts who guide students
through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from
ancient to relatively the modern times. The book is divided
into 6 chronological sections and includes more than 140
examples of the best poems in various styles (shi, sao, fu, ci,
and qu poems). It is a comprehensive introduction to the
thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry.
Each chapter is written by a scholar with a specialty in a
particular period or genre. The poems are presented in
Chinese and English, accompanied by a tone-marked
romanized version with an explanation of Chinese
linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended
strategies for reading the poems. Sound recordings of the
poems are available online free of charge. This book
fulfills a real need for tools to understand the Chinese
poetic tradition. The kind of information accompanying
each poem is much like the notes that appear in Chinese and
Japanese anthologies of poems. It also helps dispel certain
myths about Chinese poetry and the written language that
are commonly held because of Ezra Pound and Ernest
Fenollosa, who lacked any real knowledge of Chinese
in spite of the success of their translations. They were
impressed by features such as the iconicity of the ideograms
which are really only a very small part of the
written language and have little effect on the production
of the actual poems.