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Pilgrim of the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming China by Yuan Hung-Tao and His Brothers
Contains the poems and essays of Yuan Hung-tao (1568-1610). The work offers a portrait of Ming society.
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1610
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 24, 2016
This tiny tome is a pocket book of only 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches. I didn't like Yuan Hung-tao's short poems as much as I love the works of some of my favorite Japanese haiku masters, but I did like this book with its poems describing the beauty and harshness of nature and life. At times Yuan Hung-tao writes with a quiet humor. He also expresses his frustrations, but he never completely loses sight of the beauty of existence. He also sees the ironies.
The subtitle is "Poems and Essays from Ming China," but I wouldn't call the prose contained in this book essays. They would be more accurately described as curious little narratives and vignettes. One of them is a tale of Yuan and his friends sharing bizarre ghost stories.
Since Yuan Hung-tao's poetry is almost similar to paintings perhaps the publisher decided to include some black and white photos of Chinese art from around Yuan's era. There are some included among the poems.
I'm not overwhelmed with love for this book, but I do like it and recommend it.
The subtitle is "Poems and Essays from Ming China," but I wouldn't call the prose contained in this book essays. They would be more accurately described as curious little narratives and vignettes. One of them is a tale of Yuan and his friends sharing bizarre ghost stories.
Since Yuan Hung-tao's poetry is almost similar to paintings perhaps the publisher decided to include some black and white photos of Chinese art from around Yuan's era. There are some included among the poems.
I'm not overwhelmed with love for this book, but I do like it and recommend it.
November 14, 2017
Often given the critical shaft, the Ming period actually had some superb creative forces at work, especially the Brothers Yuan. Hung-tao is the most represented, with two short sections for each of his brothers. The avant-garde of the time, the three brothers pooh-poohed attempts at conservative and rigid adherence to the "golden age" of Chinese poetry and struck out along their own paths, with awesome results: poetry that is at once purposeful and personal, tales of getting drunk and staring at nature and shit--the good stuff! Chaves has a nice intro, and there's some reproductions of contemporary art, too, which is great. There is not just poetry, but prose, too, with some of Hung-tao's funny, often weird, little anecdotes collected here. The ghost stories are great!
April 5, 2018
“In our age there is no literature,
but in the village alleys
there are real poems!”
Yuan Hung-tao was a fabulous Chinese poet from the late 1500s and early 1600s. His poems are both quite realistic, and sometimes humerous (his predilection for too much wine shows up as a repeating theme). What is remarkable to me about these poems is just how sentimental they are. Two great examples I would cite are:
From the end of “Twenty-First Day of the Seventh Month”
“Walking Along the Willow Embankment Outside the West Gate.”
At other points his turns his eye freshly to the world. There is something empowering and wonderful about the poem:
“Rising from My Sickbed, I Saw the Moon as the Sky Cleared”
In “At White Deer Spring” he writes:
I’m not sure there is a better summary of Yuan’s poetry. He turned his eye to the world around him, good and bad, empowering and depressing, and full of feeling. I sincerely enjoyed this volume.
See my other reviews here!
but in the village alleys
there are real poems!”
Yuan Hung-tao was a fabulous Chinese poet from the late 1500s and early 1600s. His poems are both quite realistic, and sometimes humerous (his predilection for too much wine shows up as a repeating theme). What is remarkable to me about these poems is just how sentimental they are. Two great examples I would cite are:
From the end of “Twenty-First Day of the Seventh Month”
This was the scene of our love that year—
now I see only a tomb, overgrown with grass.
From the roots of the maples, I hear the whispering of a ghost
bearing the traces of her southern voice.
The stagnant clouds of this woman’s spirit
have been swept into rain
over a mountain I do not know.
“Walking Along the Willow Embankment Outside the West Gate.”
As in the past
graceful willows
cover the long bank
and the sun sinks
west, west
of the thousand trees.
There is only the sound
of the river
which is different than before:
then it sounded like laughter to me,
now it sounds like weeping.
At other points his turns his eye freshly to the world. There is something empowering and wonderful about the poem:
“Rising from My Sickbed, I Saw the Moon as the Sky Cleared”
This was the night of the midautumn moon of the year i-ssu [1605]
Up from my sickbed, I meet the full moon—
the clouds open, a smile opens on my face.
The clouds depart with what’s left of my depression;
the moon appears with the new good feelings.
Falling leaves are iced with clear dew,
new fragrance rises from the thick wine.
This gladness is still not deep in my heart,
but these are embers, ready to burst into flame.
In “At White Deer Spring” he writes:
For the fish, it is a question of being alive—
they don’t worry about the depth of the water.
I’m not sure there is a better summary of Yuan’s poetry. He turned his eye to the world around him, good and bad, empowering and depressing, and full of feeling. I sincerely enjoyed this volume.
See my other reviews here!
November 27, 2025
The directness, flamboyance, and subject matter of Yüan Hung-tap’s poetry appeals to me for sure. He writes about hanging out with his friends: playing chess and discussing art. He wrote one poem about chilling in the studio of one of his main guys, and it brings to mind the studios of Ian, Anson, and Joe. Both the musical memories of crafting songs, delving into abstract decision making together with those boys, but also of the time in between making the music, where in that creative environment we'd hold incredible conversations together for longer than their complexity should allow, about music, or obscure abstractions, or delving into hypotheticals for hours, spending hours defining the outermost boundaries of a word or term like “weirdo music” (Anson) or “state” (Ian). One more memory that poem reminds me of, playing wine chess in Ian’s apartment against them and Joe. After losing a piece on had to drink a health swig of wine. We had to make a second Target run mid-game to grab two more bottles. We then played music together. It’s wonderful to know that just by being friends with other artists I am taking part in an antique tradition that painters, singers, and the like have had the pleasure of enjoying for a long long time.
I also enjoy Yüan Hung-tao’s long titles, they’ll often be nearly as long as the poem itself, and also common they’ll be a kind of set up to a punch line. Which I employ in my own work.
I like that he has takes. One of my creative writing teachers was big into not being didactic. Not pushing a belief through a story. Based on the recommendations he gave he seemed to enjoy stories with ambitious meanings and no moral messages. Which are good, but stories that tell you what to think are awesome, even if you don’t agree with them. Like I found this teacher's lectures more interesting than most books. I’m not just saying “more valuable” to me as a writer (whatever that means) I’m saying they were filled with interesting tangents and thoughts, down to just the strange pop culture quirks he had like not knowing who Cardi B was, but knowing some obscure reality show. Yüan Hung-tao is as passionate in his criticism as he is with his love, but even his criticism (like the essay about how all art can be and is great regardless of the era) is enthusiastic and often pro-joy and appreciation.
I found that some of the poems in this book were exactly like the thing I like to write. He wrote of true art being found in low brow places. He wrote of the silliness of vaulting on era of poetry over another he wrote:
"Now the gentlemen of today wish to “Tangify” the whole world, and the fault the Sung for not having been the Tang in style. Well if we are going to fault the Suns for not being the Tang, why not fault the Tang for not being the Literary Anthology. Why not fault the literary Anthology for not been like the Han and Wei dynasties? And why not fault the Han for not being like the “Three Hundred Poems”? And fault the “Three Hundred Poems” for not being like the time of “knots in ropes and bird tracks [I.e the prehistoric age when messages were conveyed by tying knots in ropes and early writing imitating the appearance of bird tracks]? Indeed wouldn’t it be best to make a clean sweep of poetry and be left with just a bank sheet of paper?"
Which is very similar in theme to a poem I wrote with sardonic rhythm called "No Value: Country Music and Renaissance paintings are the light of the world.
I love this guys prose as much as the poetry, and I love how in addition to all the moralizing poetry and prose he writes, he writes a lots of poems with a different affect where he's literally just describing something (a mountain, person, painting, river, or tree) and then he's like "he'll yeah." He's like, "this is a tree with ancient grooves and seemingly infinite green leaves. it is positioned between my the Blue River where I travel three miles everyday just to take a drink of it's crisp ice cold water. I sit under this tree and read my leather bound book of truths. Hell yeah!" But he's more eloquent about it.
fav poetry book probably.
It also includes works from his brothers which are good, but not on the same level. One of his brothers should have maybe cut back on the wine.
I also enjoy Yüan Hung-tao’s long titles, they’ll often be nearly as long as the poem itself, and also common they’ll be a kind of set up to a punch line. Which I employ in my own work.
I like that he has takes. One of my creative writing teachers was big into not being didactic. Not pushing a belief through a story. Based on the recommendations he gave he seemed to enjoy stories with ambitious meanings and no moral messages. Which are good, but stories that tell you what to think are awesome, even if you don’t agree with them. Like I found this teacher's lectures more interesting than most books. I’m not just saying “more valuable” to me as a writer (whatever that means) I’m saying they were filled with interesting tangents and thoughts, down to just the strange pop culture quirks he had like not knowing who Cardi B was, but knowing some obscure reality show. Yüan Hung-tao is as passionate in his criticism as he is with his love, but even his criticism (like the essay about how all art can be and is great regardless of the era) is enthusiastic and often pro-joy and appreciation.
I found that some of the poems in this book were exactly like the thing I like to write. He wrote of true art being found in low brow places. He wrote of the silliness of vaulting on era of poetry over another he wrote:
"Now the gentlemen of today wish to “Tangify” the whole world, and the fault the Sung for not having been the Tang in style. Well if we are going to fault the Suns for not being the Tang, why not fault the Tang for not being the Literary Anthology. Why not fault the literary Anthology for not been like the Han and Wei dynasties? And why not fault the Han for not being like the “Three Hundred Poems”? And fault the “Three Hundred Poems” for not being like the time of “knots in ropes and bird tracks [I.e the prehistoric age when messages were conveyed by tying knots in ropes and early writing imitating the appearance of bird tracks]? Indeed wouldn’t it be best to make a clean sweep of poetry and be left with just a bank sheet of paper?"
Which is very similar in theme to a poem I wrote with sardonic rhythm called "No Value: Country Music and Renaissance paintings are the light of the world.
I love this guys prose as much as the poetry, and I love how in addition to all the moralizing poetry and prose he writes, he writes a lots of poems with a different affect where he's literally just describing something (a mountain, person, painting, river, or tree) and then he's like "he'll yeah." He's like, "this is a tree with ancient grooves and seemingly infinite green leaves. it is positioned between my the Blue River where I travel three miles everyday just to take a drink of it's crisp ice cold water. I sit under this tree and read my leather bound book of truths. Hell yeah!" But he's more eloquent about it.
fav poetry book probably.
It also includes works from his brothers which are good, but not on the same level. One of his brothers should have maybe cut back on the wine.
July 15, 2022
I enjoyed this slim book of Ming poetry (and prose) by the Yuan brothers--Yuan Hung-tao, Yuan Chung-tao and Yuan Tsung-tao. Although I was initially disappointed to see how much of the book was prose, since that wasn't the reason I bought the book, I found that the prose parts were surprisingly entertaining and informative.
One of the things I like about poetry, and Chinese poetry in particular, is how the reader can so often say, "I feel like that too!" or "That's a lot like me," despite the huge distance between us in time, space, and culture. That is still present in the poetry found here, which I liked, but it's found even more in the short essays. Like so much Chinese poetry of any dynasty, this collection demonstrates the customary strong Romantic (-ish) interest in natural places and man's connection to them, but this is more Wordsworthian even than that; it emphasizes not only nature but common people, their interests, and everyday lives: noisy pilgrims and tourists at monasteries; beggars; popular ghost stories; crickets and how to raise them; popular trails and historical sites; and much more. There's a gritty realness to much of the prose pieces that I find appealing.
All in all, this book offers an interesting look into the lives of Ming Dynasty folk. Of course, we still mostly get insights into the scholarly class, the exact kind of people who are able to write poetry and prose for us to read hundreds of years later, but there is a much better share of other people her than is usually the case, along with window into the Cedar Points and Colonial Williamsburgs of the Ming Dynasty--the mountains, monasteries, caves, historic sites, and other travel destinations that drew people out of their homes onto boats and trails in that era. I was surprised by how familiar it felt, how modern and middle class. It was an education.
Worth looking into, if you have any interest in the time and place. I woulda liked it to be twice as long.
One of the things I like about poetry, and Chinese poetry in particular, is how the reader can so often say, "I feel like that too!" or "That's a lot like me," despite the huge distance between us in time, space, and culture. That is still present in the poetry found here, which I liked, but it's found even more in the short essays. Like so much Chinese poetry of any dynasty, this collection demonstrates the customary strong Romantic (-ish) interest in natural places and man's connection to them, but this is more Wordsworthian even than that; it emphasizes not only nature but common people, their interests, and everyday lives: noisy pilgrims and tourists at monasteries; beggars; popular ghost stories; crickets and how to raise them; popular trails and historical sites; and much more. There's a gritty realness to much of the prose pieces that I find appealing.
All in all, this book offers an interesting look into the lives of Ming Dynasty folk. Of course, we still mostly get insights into the scholarly class, the exact kind of people who are able to write poetry and prose for us to read hundreds of years later, but there is a much better share of other people her than is usually the case, along with window into the Cedar Points and Colonial Williamsburgs of the Ming Dynasty--the mountains, monasteries, caves, historic sites, and other travel destinations that drew people out of their homes onto boats and trails in that era. I was surprised by how familiar it felt, how modern and middle class. It was an education.
Worth looking into, if you have any interest in the time and place. I woulda liked it to be twice as long.
September 15, 2017
The northern tower
is where we spoke from our hearts.
The western hill
is where we wept at parting.
I have always admired your actions -
understated, like those of the ancients -
and I remember your compassionate face.
No more Green Plum Calligraphies
will come from your hand
and the red strings of your zither
are broken forever.
Where is your soul wandering now?
Come to me in dream
and let me know.
Pilgrim in the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming China by Hung-Tao Yuan is a brief collection of works from this oft-forgotten master from 17th century China. At times a bit silly - almost like he is ridiculing his reader for having bothered him to write something down... but at other times heartbreaking like the poem I include at the opening (especially the last three lines), it is an easy read that is welcomed to calm the mind before retiring for the evening. Suggested.
is where we spoke from our hearts.
The western hill
is where we wept at parting.
I have always admired your actions -
understated, like those of the ancients -
and I remember your compassionate face.
No more Green Plum Calligraphies
will come from your hand
and the red strings of your zither
are broken forever.
Where is your soul wandering now?
Come to me in dream
and let me know.
Pilgrim in the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming China by Hung-Tao Yuan is a brief collection of works from this oft-forgotten master from 17th century China. At times a bit silly - almost like he is ridiculing his reader for having bothered him to write something down... but at other times heartbreaking like the poem I include at the opening (especially the last three lines), it is an easy read that is welcomed to calm the mind before retiring for the evening. Suggested.
June 15, 2021
Fantastic poetry and prose that I took a chance on at a used book store. Striking little crumbs of modernity jut through these beautiful simple short works. Surprisingly meaty for such a small book. Strongly recommend!
May 16, 2022
The collected works in this book feel incredibly modern. Peaceful and thought provoking observations. A small book that is worth savoring and reading slowly. Bit by bit. Allow some time for reflection.
August 3, 2012
A lovely little book of translations of the late Ming Dynasty poet Yuán Hóngdào 袁宏道. Jonathan Chaves, one of the few Western scholars of late imperial Chinese poetry, presents us with a few dozen poems and several essays from our poet, as well as a smaller selection from two of his brothers. The translations are attentive to the literary and cultural contexts of the original, although Chaves's English tends toward the overly-colloquial.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews