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Complete Poems
The Complete Poems of Li Ch'ing-chao (1084-c. 1151) brings together for the first time in English translation all the surviving verse of China's greatest woman poet.
Written during the final years of the Sung Dynasty, with its political intrigues and collapse in the face of the Tatar invasions, her poems reveal an imaginative freshness, sensuous imagery, and satirical spirit often at odds with the decadent Confucian code of the day.
Written during the final years of the Sung Dynasty, with its political intrigues and collapse in the face of the Tatar invasions, her poems reveal an imaginative freshness, sensuous imagery, and satirical spirit often at odds with the decadent Confucian code of the day.
118 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 1979
3 people are currently reading
391 people want to read
About the author
Li Qingzhao
36 books15 followersA famous writer and poet from the Song dynasty, Li Qingzhao was born into a family of officials and scholars. Before she got married, her poetry was already well known within elite circles. In 1101 she married Zhao Mingcheng, with whom she shared interests in art collection and epigraphy. They lived in present-day Shandong. After he started his official career, her husband was often absent. This inspired some of the love poems that she wrote. Both she and her husband collected many books. Her husband and she shared a love of poetry and often wrote poems for each other. They also wrote about bronze artifacts of the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
The northern Song capital of Kaifeng fell in 1126 to the Jurchens during the Jin–Song wars. Fighting took place in Shandong and their house was burned. The couple brought many of their possessions when they fled to Nanjing, where they lived for a year. Zhao died in 1129 en route to an official post. The death of her husband was a cruel stroke from which she never recovered. It was then up to Li to keep safe what was left of their collection. Li described her married life and the turmoil of her flight in an Afterword to her husband's posthumously published work, Jin shi lu. Her earlier poetry portrays her carefree days as a woman of high society, and is marked by its elegance.
Li subsequently settled in Hangzhou, where the Song government was now established. She continued writing poetry and published the Jin shi lu. According to some contemporary accounts, she was briefly married to a man named Zhang Ruzhou (張汝舟) who treated her badly, and she divorced him within months. She survived the criticism of her marriage.
Only around a hundred of her poems are known to survive, mostly in the ci form and tracing her varying fortunes in life. Also a few poems in the shi form have survived, the Afterword and a study of the ci form of poetry. She is credited with the first detailed critique of the metrics of Chinese poetry. She was regarded as a master of wanyue pai "the delicate restraint".
The northern Song capital of Kaifeng fell in 1126 to the Jurchens during the Jin–Song wars. Fighting took place in Shandong and their house was burned. The couple brought many of their possessions when they fled to Nanjing, where they lived for a year. Zhao died in 1129 en route to an official post. The death of her husband was a cruel stroke from which she never recovered. It was then up to Li to keep safe what was left of their collection. Li described her married life and the turmoil of her flight in an Afterword to her husband's posthumously published work, Jin shi lu. Her earlier poetry portrays her carefree days as a woman of high society, and is marked by its elegance.
Li subsequently settled in Hangzhou, where the Song government was now established. She continued writing poetry and published the Jin shi lu. According to some contemporary accounts, she was briefly married to a man named Zhang Ruzhou (張汝舟) who treated her badly, and she divorced him within months. She survived the criticism of her marriage.
Only around a hundred of her poems are known to survive, mostly in the ci form and tracing her varying fortunes in life. Also a few poems in the shi form have survived, the Afterword and a study of the ci form of poetry. She is credited with the first detailed critique of the metrics of Chinese poetry. She was regarded as a master of wanyue pai "the delicate restraint".
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 31, 2019
Per my caveat regarding poetry, I won't even attempt to review this. I can heartily recommend it to fans of classical Chinese verse. Li was, is, rather, the premier poetess of Chinese literature, and one of the Song dynasty luminaries. The poems here are arranged thematically, with themes of politics, flung love, and plum blossoms. Hefty notes give some background to these wonderful poems, often set to contemporary tunes.
June 27, 2016
What a beautiful book, full of longing.
October 13, 2021
I’ve read this book before but picked it up again wanting something easier on the mind / more soothing / than my typical recent book fare. Generations have by now benefited from Kenneth Rexroth’s excellent translations from the Japanese and Chinese. His own poems are for the most part imitative of those two traditions / and rather drab. If you wish to have a go at his poems I suggested The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth / rather than the collected longer ones. He was a contemporary of the Beats / and a major figure of the San Francisco Renaissance. He was a professor.
Ling Chung wrote Li Ch’ing-chao’s biography for the present edition.
Li Ch’ing-chao and her husband / Chao Ming-ch’eng / came from well-known families of scholars and officials. Their alliance was one of love.
Sadly their idyllic romance was not allowed to remain that way. There were political factions at court and struggles between them. Li and Chao / living at first in the capitol / were not able to steer clear of the disasters that ensued. They became political outcasts for more than a decade. The capitol was sacked by Tatars / and what had been a dreadful situation became even worse. At times they were forced to move / in one instance having to leave behind much of their cherished art collection. Chao died in 1129 while on his way to a government posting – he was forty-nine. In 1132 / when Li was forty-nine / she remarried but / after being abused both verbally and physically / divorced in less than a year. She lived for another twenty years.
Li Ch’ing-chao’s poems treat of the emotions and the things that for her give rise to them – love / separation / war / political turmoil / wine / the arts / things seen. She has a delicate sensitivity but treats words also with firmness and without waste. She gave herself to the fine arts and she did so with conviction and with an innate talent undoubtedly forged on the passions of her ancestors / intellectual and blood alike. She began with a heritage that in her flowering overflowed to produce poems at once sincere and sentimental. She wrote with certainty.
This is Rexroth’s translation –
This is a translation of the same poem by James Cryer, from The Shambala Anthology of Chinese Poetry –
Even a cursory comparison of the two yields one of the most salient facts about translating from the Chinese – characters of the Chinese language are nouns and verbs / sometimes with the nuance of modifiers. There aren’t any possessives / no apostrophe s’s / nothing but context to indicate tense or even gender. There is no alphabet in the sense that there is in English / or even in Japanese hiragana. The solid building blocks of the Chinese language are based on ancient ideograms that became more precise over time. The slippages in Chinese aren’t due to the characters / which are in some ways unmovable. But in another way the slippages in Chinese are in consequence of the stolid nature of the characters. Because a considerable amount of guesswork goes into the translations / even if done by scholars versed in the period of composition / even knowing the author’s oeuvre as a whole / even after having already completed a host of translations of work by contemporaries of the poet in question / even having a great facility with the language and a talent for translation – even then / the characters of the poem can yield multiple meanings / even for the same translator.
[ With regard to the functioning of ideograms / I could recommend The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry / a reworking by Ezra Pound of an essay of that name by Ernest Fenollosa. Scholars have told us that Ezra Pound / even with Fenollosa’s guidance / or perhaps in part because of it / didn’t get the whole matter quite right. But we can be sure that Rexroth was familiar with the book / and that it would have influenced him and / thereby / his translations. ]
J R Hightower in his Topics In Chinese Literature (Cambridge / 1950) defines tz’u poetry as –
This means that Li Ch’ing-chao was using a poetic form that was already very precise / the rules of which were assigned in advance. The form specified the tune to which the lyric would be set / which is to say its rhythms / as well as the end rhymes / and even the distribution of vowels. The tz’u form is more rigorous than any in the English language / none of which specify the tune to which the lyric would have been set when sung. On the other hand / at least as it developed during the Sung Dynasty / it allowed for a kind of freedom when choosing line lengths. The nature of the Chinese language / as discussed above / and as is always the case with any language / would also have been a constraint / although quite probably not experienced as such. When writing we (tend to) want to experience the freedoms the language permits / not its constraints. (The Oulipo franchise thought differently / and relished creating within restraints they added to the project of writing.)
In introductory remarks to a pair of for her rather lengthy poems addressed to Lord Han / she writes – I have composed two poems in the ancient regular form, to express my trivial thoughts and to prepare poems for a future collection of my poetry. The poems deal with the politics of the moment / Lord Han having been appointed one of the envoys to the Barbarians, tasked with mediating on behalf of the court for the return of captured Emperors. What I find most significant about the poems / however / is not so much their political content / as the way in which she indicates her two reasons for having written them – on the one hand to express my trivial thoughts / and on the other to prepare poems for a future collection. What I admire is the subtlety of her thought / and the fact that the two reasons given would seem to be antithetical to each other. If her thoughts are trivial why is she preparing them for a future collection of her poetry? Are we to think that she thought all of her poetry an expression of trivial concerns? Is she being modest? and then not so modest? Is she being ironic by suggesting this contrasting pair? Is she appearing humble in order to gain an audience? Is she humble?
There is a beautiful line in the poem / expressing the longing that can accompany loss / through a metaphor so delicate and so unheralded / that it leaves us somewhat breathless – Who can understand me, longing for my parents as the grass bends for dew? The line also expresses the filial piety so much a part of Chinese culture / at least at that time. I wonder if it might not give us also an indication of that apparent dichotomy from the introduction / suggesting that such longing for the lost (for example) is so common an emotion as to be in that sense trivial / while at the same time being so universal as to warrant the poem’s inclusion in a future collection of my poetry. Elsewhere she writes with disarming simplicity – I am old and lonely. / and in another poem I am old and have accomplished little. What is most common is also what is most shared. What is most common (trivial) is also what is most shared (a future collection of my poetry).
[ She would not have given her poems titles – those have been added by the translator/ so I’ve not repeated the. ]
I have no words for my weary sorrow, / no fine poetic thoughts. Is that not the stuff of which the finest poems are made? – saying what it is impossible to say / writing where even writing is out of reach? Her soft gesture says much / surpassing any other words that might somehow attempt to broach her loss. And such tenderness / and such technique / gives birth to another of her improbable and finally impenetrable metaphors – I feel as though I were filled with quivering water. We might any of us want to feel the way Li Ch’ing-chao feels / but for its causes. The sad fact of the matter is – Broken hearted—we had relied on each other.
[ For some inane reason Rexroth has divided her poems up into categories – Youth / Loneliness / Politics / that sort of thing. I’m sure she hadn’t arranged them that way. Any such cataloging of her phenomenal lyrics can only reduce them. His attempt at ownership fails – the poems fall glistening / out / toward us. ]
/ copyright © 2021 Alan Davies
Ling Chung wrote Li Ch’ing-chao’s biography for the present edition.
Li Ch’ing-chao (1084-c.1151) is universally considered to be China’s greatest woman poet. Her life was colorful and versatile; other than a great poet, she was a scholar of history and classics, a literary critic, an art collector, a specialist in bronze and stone inscriptions, a painter, a calligrapher, and a political commentator. Li is reputed to be the greatest writer of tz’u poetry, a lyric verse form written to the popular tunes of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). … She was, without question, the most “liberated” woman of her time.
Li Ch’ing-chao and her husband / Chao Ming-ch’eng / came from well-known families of scholars and officials. Their alliance was one of love.
For a thousand years, their marriage has been celebrated by the literary gentry as an ideal one. They wrote poems to each other. They shared the same passion for poetry and classics, music, painting, and the art of calligraphy.
Sadly their idyllic romance was not allowed to remain that way. There were political factions at court and struggles between them. Li and Chao / living at first in the capitol / were not able to steer clear of the disasters that ensued. They became political outcasts for more than a decade. The capitol was sacked by Tatars / and what had been a dreadful situation became even worse. At times they were forced to move / in one instance having to leave behind much of their cherished art collection. Chao died in 1129 while on his way to a government posting – he was forty-nine. In 1132 / when Li was forty-nine / she remarried but / after being abused both verbally and physically / divorced in less than a year. She lived for another twenty years.
Li Ch’ing-chao’s poems treat of the emotions and the things that for her give rise to them – love / separation / war / political turmoil / wine / the arts / things seen. She has a delicate sensitivity but treats words also with firmness and without waste. She gave herself to the fine arts and she did so with conviction and with an innate talent undoubtedly forged on the passions of her ancestors / intellectual and blood alike. She began with a heritage that in her flowering overflowed to produce poems at once sincere and sentimental. She wrote with certainty.
This is Rexroth’s translation –
TO THE TUNE “THE SILK WASHING BROOK”
I idle at the window
In the small garden.
The Spring colors are bright.
Inside, the curtains have not been raised
And the room is deep in shadow.
In my high chamber
I silently play my jade zither.
Far-off mountain caves spit clouds,
Hastening the coming of dusk.
A light breeze brings puffs of rain
And casts moving shadows on the ground.
I am afraid I cannot keep
The pear blossoms from withering.
This is a translation of the same poem by James Cryer, from The Shambala Anthology of Chinese Poetry –
Out the window of my little house spring colors darken.
Shadows weigh heavily on the curtains.
Keeping to my room, silent, I tune my jade lute
as distant peaks emerge against the mountains,
evening hastens, a fine wind blowing rain dallies
in the shadows as the pear blossoms are about to die,
and I can’t stop them.
Even a cursory comparison of the two yields one of the most salient facts about translating from the Chinese – characters of the Chinese language are nouns and verbs / sometimes with the nuance of modifiers. There aren’t any possessives / no apostrophe s’s / nothing but context to indicate tense or even gender. There is no alphabet in the sense that there is in English / or even in Japanese hiragana. The solid building blocks of the Chinese language are based on ancient ideograms that became more precise over time. The slippages in Chinese aren’t due to the characters / which are in some ways unmovable. But in another way the slippages in Chinese are in consequence of the stolid nature of the characters. Because a considerable amount of guesswork goes into the translations / even if done by scholars versed in the period of composition / even knowing the author’s oeuvre as a whole / even after having already completed a host of translations of work by contemporaries of the poet in question / even having a great facility with the language and a talent for translation – even then / the characters of the poem can yield multiple meanings / even for the same translator.
[ With regard to the functioning of ideograms / I could recommend The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry / a reworking by Ezra Pound of an essay of that name by Ernest Fenollosa. Scholars have told us that Ezra Pound / even with Fenollosa’s guidance / or perhaps in part because of it / didn’t get the whole matter quite right. But we can be sure that Rexroth was familiar with the book / and that it would have influenced him and / thereby / his translations. ]
J R Hightower in his Topics In Chinese Literature (Cambridge / 1950) defines tz’u poetry as –
a song form composed of lines of unequal length, prescribed rhyme and tonal sequence, occurring in a large number of variant patterns, each of which bears the name of a musical air. … It is undeniable that in Sung times some, and later all, of the tz'u writers who copied earlier patterns instead of inventing new ones, bound themselves to the sequences of tones and rhymes used by their predecessors.
This means that Li Ch’ing-chao was using a poetic form that was already very precise / the rules of which were assigned in advance. The form specified the tune to which the lyric would be set / which is to say its rhythms / as well as the end rhymes / and even the distribution of vowels. The tz’u form is more rigorous than any in the English language / none of which specify the tune to which the lyric would have been set when sung. On the other hand / at least as it developed during the Sung Dynasty / it allowed for a kind of freedom when choosing line lengths. The nature of the Chinese language / as discussed above / and as is always the case with any language / would also have been a constraint / although quite probably not experienced as such. When writing we (tend to) want to experience the freedoms the language permits / not its constraints. (The Oulipo franchise thought differently / and relished creating within restraints they added to the project of writing.)
In introductory remarks to a pair of for her rather lengthy poems addressed to Lord Han / she writes – I have composed two poems in the ancient regular form, to express my trivial thoughts and to prepare poems for a future collection of my poetry. The poems deal with the politics of the moment / Lord Han having been appointed one of the envoys to the Barbarians, tasked with mediating on behalf of the court for the return of captured Emperors. What I find most significant about the poems / however / is not so much their political content / as the way in which she indicates her two reasons for having written them – on the one hand to express my trivial thoughts / and on the other to prepare poems for a future collection. What I admire is the subtlety of her thought / and the fact that the two reasons given would seem to be antithetical to each other. If her thoughts are trivial why is she preparing them for a future collection of her poetry? Are we to think that she thought all of her poetry an expression of trivial concerns? Is she being modest? and then not so modest? Is she being ironic by suggesting this contrasting pair? Is she appearing humble in order to gain an audience? Is she humble?
There is a beautiful line in the poem / expressing the longing that can accompany loss / through a metaphor so delicate and so unheralded / that it leaves us somewhat breathless – Who can understand me, longing for my parents as the grass bends for dew? The line also expresses the filial piety so much a part of Chinese culture / at least at that time. I wonder if it might not give us also an indication of that apparent dichotomy from the introduction / suggesting that such longing for the lost (for example) is so common an emotion as to be in that sense trivial / while at the same time being so universal as to warrant the poem’s inclusion in a future collection of my poetry. Elsewhere she writes with disarming simplicity – I am old and lonely. / and in another poem I am old and have accomplished little. What is most common is also what is most shared. What is most common (trivial) is also what is most shared (a future collection of my poetry).
TO THE TUNE “A LITTLE WILD GOOSE”
This morning I woke
In a bamboo bed with paper curtains.
I have no words for my weary sorrow,
No fine poetic thoughts.
The sandalwood incense smoke is stale,
The jade burner is cold.
I feel as though I were filled with quivering water.
To accompany my feelings
Someone plays three times on a flute
“Plum Blossoms Are Falling
in a Village by the River.”
How bitter this spring is.
Small wind, fine rain, hsiao, hsiao,
Falls like a thousand lines of tears.
The flute player is gone.
The jade tower is empty.
Broken hearted—we had relied on each other.
I pick a plum branch,
But my man has gone beyond the sky,
And there is no one to give it to.
[ She would not have given her poems titles – those have been added by the translator/ so I’ve not repeated the. ]
I have no words for my weary sorrow, / no fine poetic thoughts. Is that not the stuff of which the finest poems are made? – saying what it is impossible to say / writing where even writing is out of reach? Her soft gesture says much / surpassing any other words that might somehow attempt to broach her loss. And such tenderness / and such technique / gives birth to another of her improbable and finally impenetrable metaphors – I feel as though I were filled with quivering water. We might any of us want to feel the way Li Ch’ing-chao feels / but for its causes. The sad fact of the matter is – Broken hearted—we had relied on each other.
[ For some inane reason Rexroth has divided her poems up into categories – Youth / Loneliness / Politics / that sort of thing. I’m sure she hadn’t arranged them that way. Any such cataloging of her phenomenal lyrics can only reduce them. His attempt at ownership fails – the poems fall glistening / out / toward us. ]
/ copyright © 2021 Alan Davies
December 18, 2011
I had to read this for World Lit. I'm not really a fan of poems, but I actually really liked this. Also, a girl in my class is an exchange stident from China so she read the poems in their original Chinese, which was really neat. There are exactly five Chinese characters per line. Coolish. ALSO the author is a woman which is cool because there were almost no women writers at the time and yet she actually became a very popular poet.
May 11, 2020
Una poesía femenina, sensorial y, por encima de todo, elegante. Uno de los mejores exponentes de una poesía dinástica a la que marcó la caída de los Song del Norte (que dio paso a los Song del Sur). Preciosamente documentada, anotada y traducida, solo tenemos palabras lindas hacia esta edición.
September 11, 2014
Startlingly current.
September 21, 2025
1st review: This lady was depressed, heartbroken, homesick, and drunk.
2nd review: Ancient Chinese sad girl poems kinda hit the spot sometimes
2nd review: Ancient Chinese sad girl poems kinda hit the spot sometimes
June 3, 2020
Did you know that the Chinese call the Milky Way the River of Heaven?
Exquisitely beautiful, delicate, transient poetry, splashed with colour and imagery - jade, jasper, plum, red, yellow - and evocatively wistful, these are the poems of youth, of hope and happiness and love of the ephemeral beauty about her.
From some of my favourites:
YOUTH
Two Springs, to the tune 'Small Hills': "Once more the new grass is kingfisher green." "Blue-green clouds carve jade dragons."
Ninth Day, Ninth Month: "Thin fog under thick clouds, / Sadness endures through the long day."
LONELINESS, EXILE
Naturally, the poems on melancholy are not as vivid nor vibrant as those of youthful love...
Thoughts from the Women's Quarter, to the tune 'Nostalgia of the Flute on the Phoenix Terrace': "Only the green flowing water / In front of the pavilion / Knows my eyes that stare and stare."
POLITICS
The political poems are the least accessible - and so least enjoyable - for two reasons: they allude to a great many periods and figures of history, to which there are a great many notes, and since these allusions are fleeting and explanations brief, it is impossible to gain any flavour of the background stories. The Poems Dedicated to Lord Han and Lord Hu, for example, covers so much of Chinese history, it is not possible to gain the sense of the poem without a great deal of background reading. To Chinese scholars, this is not a problem; to the lay reader, this is a significant block.
HIS DEATH, OLD AGE
After her husband had died, a few years after fleeing the Song capital to the South, Li mourned his loss, a true companion with whom she shared the love of poetry and ancient artefacts. These poems hold little beauty, but much regret.
MYSTICISM
Drawing on Taoist mysticism, these few poems are laced with regret among the magnificent imagery of Chinese folklore of the Heavens.
Conclusion:
Of all these 65 poems, those set to the tunes of well-known songs (of the time), the tz'u, are the most enjoyable, and of those, the youthful ones the most searingly beautiful. The other form, the shih poems, of which all of the political poems belong, are the least.
Exquisitely beautiful, delicate, transient poetry, splashed with colour and imagery - jade, jasper, plum, red, yellow - and evocatively wistful, these are the poems of youth, of hope and happiness and love of the ephemeral beauty about her.
From some of my favourites:
YOUTH
Two Springs, to the tune 'Small Hills': "Once more the new grass is kingfisher green." "Blue-green clouds carve jade dragons."
Ninth Day, Ninth Month: "Thin fog under thick clouds, / Sadness endures through the long day."
LONELINESS, EXILE
Naturally, the poems on melancholy are not as vivid nor vibrant as those of youthful love...
Thoughts from the Women's Quarter, to the tune 'Nostalgia of the Flute on the Phoenix Terrace': "Only the green flowing water / In front of the pavilion / Knows my eyes that stare and stare."
POLITICS
The political poems are the least accessible - and so least enjoyable - for two reasons: they allude to a great many periods and figures of history, to which there are a great many notes, and since these allusions are fleeting and explanations brief, it is impossible to gain any flavour of the background stories. The Poems Dedicated to Lord Han and Lord Hu, for example, covers so much of Chinese history, it is not possible to gain the sense of the poem without a great deal of background reading. To Chinese scholars, this is not a problem; to the lay reader, this is a significant block.
HIS DEATH, OLD AGE
After her husband had died, a few years after fleeing the Song capital to the South, Li mourned his loss, a true companion with whom she shared the love of poetry and ancient artefacts. These poems hold little beauty, but much regret.
MYSTICISM
Drawing on Taoist mysticism, these few poems are laced with regret among the magnificent imagery of Chinese folklore of the Heavens.
Conclusion:
Of all these 65 poems, those set to the tunes of well-known songs (of the time), the tz'u, are the most enjoyable, and of those, the youthful ones the most searingly beautiful. The other form, the shih poems, of which all of the political poems belong, are the least.
October 27, 2020
I’ve been doing a little tour of ancient Chinese poetry recently, and have been particularly enjoying some of the Kenneth Rexroth/Ling Chung translations (Women Poets of China was good overall, but a bit limited in subject matter and consistency). From what I’ve been able to gather, Li Ching-chao was considered one of the greatest poets in Chinese literature. She does not disappoint.
What makes this collection great is how it surveys her work by more diverse categories, and she has the range. She was one of the only woman poets who was able to write political poems, and are very impressive, particularly in contrast to her poems on loneliness, exile, and the death of her husband. From my wildly limited knowledge of the subject, her reputation seems deserved.
If you have any interest in this kind of poetry, I would suggest her and Li Po. Read the biography at the end before diving in - like Women Poets of China, it could do with more and better context, but grouping through themes rather than time of publication works well here.
I love literature in translation, and I am obsessed with what Chinese poetry offers to the global canon. By my estimation, this is the cream of the crop, and a great introduction.
What makes this collection great is how it surveys her work by more diverse categories, and she has the range. She was one of the only woman poets who was able to write political poems, and are very impressive, particularly in contrast to her poems on loneliness, exile, and the death of her husband. From my wildly limited knowledge of the subject, her reputation seems deserved.
If you have any interest in this kind of poetry, I would suggest her and Li Po. Read the biography at the end before diving in - like Women Poets of China, it could do with more and better context, but grouping through themes rather than time of publication works well here.
I love literature in translation, and I am obsessed with what Chinese poetry offers to the global canon. By my estimation, this is the cream of the crop, and a great introduction.
September 7, 2021
Li Ch’ing Chao (1084-1151) is regarded as one of China’s greatest women poets and the poetry of heartbreak and loneliness from a thousand years ago in Sung Dynasty China touches a chord even today, but there isn’t enough range here for my taste. Here are a couple of poems I liked that give you a sample:
Remorse
--------
Deep in the silent inner room
Every fiber of my soft heart
Turns to a thousand strands of sorrow.
I loved the Spring,
But the Spring is gone
As rain hastens the falling petals.
I lean on the balustrade,
Moving from one end to the other,
My emotions are still disordered.
Where is he?
Withered grass stretches to the horizon
And hides from sight
Any road by which he might return.
Spring Ends
----------
The River of Heaven turns across the sky.
All the world is covered with bed curtains.
It grows cold.
Tear stains spread on my mat and pillow.
I get up and take off my clothes
And listlessly ask “How late at night is it?”
The green feather pattern of lotus pod,
The gold thread design of lotus leaves,
Seem small and sparse on my gauze sleeping robe.
The same weather as in the old days,
The same dress I wore then,
Only my arms are empty of love,
And our past is gone forever.
Remorse
--------
Deep in the silent inner room
Every fiber of my soft heart
Turns to a thousand strands of sorrow.
I loved the Spring,
But the Spring is gone
As rain hastens the falling petals.
I lean on the balustrade,
Moving from one end to the other,
My emotions are still disordered.
Where is he?
Withered grass stretches to the horizon
And hides from sight
Any road by which he might return.
Spring Ends
----------
The River of Heaven turns across the sky.
All the world is covered with bed curtains.
It grows cold.
Tear stains spread on my mat and pillow.
I get up and take off my clothes
And listlessly ask “How late at night is it?”
The green feather pattern of lotus pod,
The gold thread design of lotus leaves,
Seem small and sparse on my gauze sleeping robe.
The same weather as in the old days,
The same dress I wore then,
Only my arms are empty of love,
And our past is gone forever.
December 26, 2024
Li Ch'ing-chao vivió entre 1084 y 1151, y es reconocida como una de las poetas más importantes de China. No conozco mucho de la historia de China durante este periodo, por lo que muchos poemas, en particular los políticos, son realmente incomprensibles para mí, pero los comentarios que acompañan a esta edición ayudan mucho. El estilo de su poesía, su vínculo con la naturaleza en todas sus formas y cómo esta refleja mucho de la interioridad humana es algo precioso, y muy distinto de los estilos poéticos que vemos hoy en día. Por eso, hay un extrañamiento placentero al leerla. Pero también hay temas "inmortales", que no dejan de sorprender por la distancia en el espacio y el tiempo: la desesperación de la vejez, el inmenso dolor de perder a un ser amado, la avidez de conocer nuestro entorno. En fin, vivía en tiempos muy complejos, su vida personal era interrumpida por sucesos históricos, pero hallaba tiempo para apreciar el arte, la belleza, el vino y su personalidad se trasluce en sus versos.
September 5, 2022
las cosas permanecen
los hombres no
todo en su final se acaba
quisiera hablar
pero mis lágrimas se precipitan
dicen que en Shuangxi
la primavera es aún hermosa
podría navegar allí
en una barca ligera
pero quizá esta sea tan pequeña
tan frágil
que no pueda soportar el peso de tanta melancolía
los hombres no
todo en su final se acaba
quisiera hablar
pero mis lágrimas se precipitan
dicen que en Shuangxi
la primavera es aún hermosa
podría navegar allí
en una barca ligera
pero quizá esta sea tan pequeña
tan frágil
que no pueda soportar el peso de tanta melancolía
March 28, 2020
This complete collection confirms that Li Qingzhao could write concisely with beauty and precision on pretty much every topic. The same keen eye unearths the beauty and truth to be found in nature, politics, and the inevitability of old age.
March 13, 2025
what a genius i love her!!! her surviving poems show how easily she switches between a sardonic, critical tone in her political pieces, and a more deeply reflective, heart achingly nostalgic one in regards to her husband’s passing. time does come for us all :’)
April 24, 2021
Beautiful book of poetry.
March 27, 2022
he dicho más veces "buah es que soy yo literal" leyendo poemas de una señora china del siglo XI de las que me gustaría admitir
September 20, 2023
ésto es lo que debería haber sido góngora
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July 20, 2024One of Li's famous ci poems is "A Dream Song" written 1099. This is also her first poem.
April 19, 2025
ahead of her time. queen
March 20, 2017
Li Ch'ing-chao (1084-c1151, who lived late in the Sung Dynasty) is considered China's greatest women's poet. her poetry is both strong and delicately rendered: "I hear that Spring at Two Rivers/ Is still beautiful./ I had hoped to take a boat there,/ But I know so fragile a vessel/ Won't bear such a weight of sorrow." i've been rereading it in the wake of the second book of Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven trilogy, River of Stars, which portrays her life as the Sung Dynasty begins to fall apart.
November 25, 2016
Lovely read & must read it again soon.
March 24, 2017
very good! Li is one of the greatest poetessess in China. And this translated collection of her poems is so readable and charming that my friends and I are happily enjoying them. They are so Great!
March 18, 2017
Absolutely beautiful collection. Well worth owning.
April 7, 2019
The greatest female poet in any tradition, imo.
May 17, 2023
she’s just like me (she writes about the same three topics until her last breath)
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