The Wine Cup

by Richard Berengarten

Sonnet-sequences have a history of nearly 1,000 years. But a sequence of villanelles? Here, perhaps for the first time ever in English, is a suite of twenty-four of them. The delicate instrument of the villanelle is played, lightly and gently, to salute Tao Yuanming, Chinese poet, Daoist, recluse, and a great Lord of Wine, who lived more than 1,500 years ago.

"In these beautiful, lucid poems, Richard Berengarten exploits the scope of the villanelle in a profound engagement with nature and mortality, in which past, present and future voices resonate across East and West. Accompanied by 'old friends', he fills the wine jug and considers existential realities of love and loss, imagination and creativity, where his thought and form are testimony to a life-long intimacy with Daoism and the I Ching ." -Lucy Hamilton

"Poetry inspired by wine is almost a genre in Chinese literature. The Chinese pastoral poet Tao Yuanming (365?-427) pioneers what may be called 'alcoholyricism'. Berengarten's drinking songs are not just a fitting tribute to and admirable emulation of Tao Yuanming's poetic theme and art, but their evocation of idyllic rural scenes and deep reflections on humanity's relation to nature entitles him to be called a Tao Yuanming in English garb." -Ming Dong Gu

"There is an elegiac if not valedictory tone abroad and at home in these beautiful poems. We are in the aural territory of an ageing song-bird - the most musical of our older poets - gathering his forces to sing, like Shakespeare's lark, at heaven's gate. He is our host and guest, as we age along with him." -Anthony Rudolf

36 pages, Paperback

Published September 23, 2022

About the author

Richard Berengarten is an English poet. Having lived in Italy, Greece, the US and the former Yugoslavia, his perspectives as a poet combine English, French, Mediterranean, Jewish, Slavic, American and Oriental influences. His poems explore historical and political material, inner worlds and their archetypal resonances, and relationships and everyday life. His work is marked by its multicultural frames of reference, depth of themes, and variety of forms. In the 1970s, he founded and ran the international Cambridge Poetry Festival. He has been an important presence in contemporary poetry for the past 40 years, and his work has been translated into more than 90 languages. Also known as Richard Burns.