Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

by David Hinton (Translator)

The earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history, Mountain Home is vital poetry that feels utterly contemporary. China's tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" poetry stretches across millennia. This is a plain-spoken poetry of immediate day-to-day experience, and yet seems most akin to China's grand landscape paintings. Although its wisdom is ancient, rooted in Taoist and Zen thought, the work feels utterly contemporary, especially as rendered here in Hinton's rich and accessible translations. Mountain Home collects poems from 5th- through 13th-century China and includes the poets Li Po, Po Chu-i and Tu Fu. The "rivers-and-mountains" tradition covers a remarkable range of topics: comic domestic scenes, social protest, travel, sage recluses, and mountain landscapes shaped into forms of enlightenment. And within this range, the poems articulate the experience of living as an organic part of the natural world and its processes. In an age of global ecological disruption and mass extinction, this tradition grows more urgently important every day. Mountain Home offers poems that will charm and inform not just readers of poetry, but also the large community of readers who are interested in environmental awareness.

Genres: Poetry, China, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Chinese Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

David Hinton has published numerous books of poetry and essays, and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy—all informed by an abiding interest in deep ecological thinking. This widely-acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from NEA and NEH, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award (Academy of American Poets) and the PEN American Translation Award. Most recently, Hinton received a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am a voracious reader, I never have been drawn to poetry. It has always felt like too much work and in the end irrelevant to me. But having heard a podcast with David Hinton about this collection and having read many of the poems in this book, I see a new possibility, a poetry that is of the every day, of nature, of thoughts and concerns that I too share. I sometimes stare out the window and wonder what the clouds see or what the birds are laughing about or how the moon can still take my breath away after all these years. How human it makes me feel to know that people more than 1,000 years ago spent their time on similar wonderments.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a book that I have finished, but a life book . . .
Hinton's introduction is helpful on key ideas and conveying a sense of what reading in the original must be like.

Tu Fu is my favorite this time through.

Facing Night
Outside a lone city, our river village rests
among confusions of tumbling streams.

Deep mounts hurry brief winter light
here. Tall trees calming bottomless wind,

cranes glide in to mist-silvered shadows,
and hens nestle into thatch roofs. Tonight,

lamplight scattered across ch'in and books
all night long, I can see through my death.

And the last lines from Dawn Landscape

And these deer at my bramble gate: so close
here, we touch our own kind in each other.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the past, I've been slow to warm to Hinton, preferring earlier masters of translation like Burton Watson, David Young and A. C. Graham. I'm especially fond of Kenneth Rexroth's mid-20th-century translations.

After a few months with Hinton, I've fallen under his spell. Chinese poetry, which I can only read in translation, is the closest thing I have to a sacred text – it's what I turn to when I'm down, or when I want to be taken to a completely different geography of mind. This is a rich collection, a body of work that will always be beyond me – and mysteriously close. Hinton does not replace earlier translators, but he's excellent company. I'm grateful.

Footnote: another reviewer refers to a podcast with David Hinton. After some hunting, I think I've found it on in iTunes U: it's World Books #17 (BBC/PRI/WGBH).

[Eadweard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meng Chiao's "Laments of the Gorges" has to be one of the best and most bizarre/surrealistic chinese poems ever written.





Content:

BEGINNINGS (5th Century C.E.)
Tao Ch’ien (365–427)
Hsieh Ling-yun (385–433)

T'ANG DYNASTY (618–907)
Meng Hao-jan (689–740)
Wang Wei (701–761)
Li Po (701–762)
Tu Fu (712–770)
Wei Ying-wu (c. 737–792)
Han Shan (c. 7th–9th centuries)
Meng Chiao (751–814)
Liu Tsung-yuan (773–819)
Po Chu-i (772–846)
Chia Tao (779–843)
Tu Mu (803–853)

SUNG DYNASTY (960–1279)
Mei Yao-ch’en (1002–1060)
Wang An-shih (1021–1086)
Su Tung-p’o (1037–1101)
Lu Yu (1125–1210)
Fan Ch’eng-ta (1126–1193)
Yang Wan-li (1127–1206)

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of Chinese “mountain-water” 山水 (landscape) poetry by a leading translator. With excellent introductions to each poet.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writings salutary for the soul. David Hinton’s translations flow much as the water through rivers and falls in these poems forms eddies gentle, wild. The insight of these poetic masters could be hardly more relevant to our post-ecological zeitgeist. Even simpler, these writings speak of something endemic to the human condition at, perhaps, its most sensitive, spiritual, and rugged.

[Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, for me, translations of Chinese poetry that really bring it alive, though Red Pine's are also amazing and truly heart-cutting and brain brightening. But these translations bring out aspects of depth and imaginal light that I hadn't felt and noted before... Translations of our time, for sure. It's perfect for reading here and there, like stepping a gushing river or a sweet burbling stream on stones or small bridges.

[Richard Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Some great poetry here. Skip down to the dashes if you want to know how I feel about the original writers rather than my experience with this collection in particular.]

Lots of people love this translator. I just don't. I keep trying, but I can't get past his style.

The poetry in here, or at least a good bit of it, is familiar to me from other collections, other translators. Poetry I responded to positively elsewhere doesn't work for me. To be fair, he's doing exactly what he means to do, and other readers completely approve, but I don't like it.

The biggest difficulty for me is how he rearranges the original end-stopped phrasing and makes it break over lines and even between the unrhymed couplets. The break has no connection to meaning. It's entirely visual. In fact, the poems look like he's trying to right-justify everything. Why? Poetry that's supposed to breath between lines instead rumbles on to the next line and the next verse. Once I become aware of the translator behind the poetry, I can't unsee it, and I can't focus on the poems. I pause at the end of the line and discover the thought continues below, and that little interruption takes me out of the poetry and back in to my head. It feels like he's standing between us instead of bringing the reader and the poet together.

Did you ever watch a TV show or go to a movie where the music was too loud and the dialogue was buried in the mix? And it distracts you and it bugs you and frustrates you, taking you out of the show? That's me with this translation.

Other people seem to like it. Lots of 5 star ratings. I'm the outlier. If numbers mean anything, he's going about this the right way, and I can be safely ignored. But if you're like me and get distracted by stuff, be aware.

---------------------------------------------

As far as the original poets--I love these guys. I already have collections by many of them and find them not just esthetically pleasing by somehow deeply emotionally satisfying. Talking about escaping the day-to-day grind of the city to hike mountain trails and lose yourself in nature, traveling down rivers, visiting remote monasteries, reading your books on the farm, just letting life happen, really appeals to me. I may not be making sense of all the philosophical nuances, no doubt missing a lot of the chan doctrine (which is nicely summed up in the brief chapter introductions), but even without every layer of deep meaning, these poets and their work is probably my favorite.

Several of these poets, though, were new to me, so I'm gonna look for other books with more of their poetry. But hopefully I'll find someone whose translation ethos and style match my preferences.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

How much you enjoy these poems will probably reflect more on you than the poetry itself. Simply put: a thousand years of wilderness poetry with either strike you or it won't.

If poems about nature do nothing for you, don't worry, but don't read this. If you enjoy poems about the moon, mountains, and rivers, then pick this up. If you like one of these poems, you'll probably like all of them. But, at the same time, you may grow tired of rivers and mountains.

Appreciation of these poems will vary wildly person to person, and then the appreciation of the dozen poets this covers will also vary from poet to poet.

I recommend it, but I would: I like this kind of thing. Stillness and silence in written words. If that's not you, just pick up something else.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers a genre of Chinese poetry from 400 - 1200 C.E. The poems tend to be short and beautiful. At first they about observation of wonderful scenes (mountains in the rain), and as the poetry evolves the poet becomes a more active presence in the poems. The scene is evoking some kind of response in the poet (e.g., regret).

My brother Frank gave me this a couple of years ago, and it was great. One of the poets, called Cold Mountain, I found to be particularly good. So Frank gave me a book of his poetry. Cold Mountain was kind of a recluse who wrote his poems on rocks and trees--wait a couple of years and I'll update everyone on this poetry.

[AB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Night Rain at Luster Gap
The gorge's river all empty clarity, rain sweeps in,
cold breezy whispers beginning deep in the night,
and ten thousand pearls start clattering on a plate,
each one's tic a perfect clarity piercing my bones.
I scratch my head in dream, then get up and listen
till dawn, hearing each sound appear and disappear.
I've listened to rain all my life. My hair's white now,
and I still don't know night rain on a spring river.

if you've read some of Hintons other translations, then you'll notice some repeats but it was such an amazing collection

[Sem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hinton is far from being my favourite translator. Every translator has his quirks and mannerisms but if they insert themselves between me and the poetry too often I tend to drift. It took me an unconscionable length of time to finish this book. And I prefer place names to be untranslated but I realize that there are two schools of thought on that subject. For me, it's a matter of aesthetics. Heigh-ho. Four stars nonetheless.

[Scipio Africanus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the greatest translation I've read but not the worst. He gets the general idea across but I felt it lacked passion. Was a bit plain for poetry on majestic landscapes, but there were a few gems in here that made it worth the read. If you're new to Chinese poetry start with Kenneth Rexroths translations, and Rewi Alley's translation of Bai Juyi instead and then come back to this one.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the history and the lineage but I am not sure the poetry itself resonated with me. Ultimately I found it felt repetitive which I am not sure if it’s due to translation or my own personal lack of knowledge.

[David Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good biographies, nice selection of poems and of course Hinton is a masterful translator.

[Sarah Hutchins · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful collection of poetry and life lessons.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was in my 20's and lived in Berkeley with a bunch of friends, we started reading ancient Chinese poetry, especially Li Po and Tu Fu. A lot of their poems are about visits with old friends, drinking wine, and looking at the moon -- timeless stuff.

I definitely recommend David Hinton's collections of Li Po and Tu Fu, but this broader collection (like a lot of anthologies) is somewhat hit or miss. Many of these poets are amazing and I found myself dog-earring dozens of pages with poems I loved, but there were also a lot that didn't grab me (in some cases, entire eras of poetry left me cold). But I guess that's what anthologies like this are for, to sample a variety of writers and find the ones you like.

My favorite thing about this book were the introductions to each section, with biographies of each poet and history lessons on China's different dynasties/wars/counter-cultural figures, etc. Oddly enough, I might've preferred more of this and less poems. But I do hope to follow up on the poets I liked the most and read longer collections of their work someday.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of mountain and river poetry of China from the fourth through 13th century. The brief biographies and introduction to the book are very good. Since the translations are done by one person the vocabulary tends to be a bit repetitive, inevitable perhaps. See also "The White Pony" also an anthology to compare translations and biographies. As I have no Chinese language I am completely dependent on others translations such as the many available of 'Cold Mountain' etc.

[John Pappas · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Hinton's newly translated collection of classical Chinese poets is revelatory. Spare, limpid poems framed with comprehensive biographical, aesthetic, philosophical, cultural and historical notes that are not only well-presented, but actually fun to read. Still, the real star here is Hinton's preternatural ability to translate these thousand year old poems, preserving their beauty and clarity.

[Trishuwa Trishuwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

By my bed. For those of us, and I am such a person, who love the earth, mountains, rivers, the wild it speaks to the heart.

[Arthur Rosenfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could only keep ten books, this one would be one of them.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[Laura-nassidesa Eschbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have not read ancient Chinese poetry this is a good starting place