Chris Wallach and I are starting a reading group in 2015 with the aim of reading one of the translations each month of such poets as Wang Wei, Han-Shan, Li Ch’ing-chao, Tu Fu, Su Tung-p’o, Bo Juyi, Bei Dao, by such translators as Arthur Waley, Kenneth Rexroth, David Young, Burton Watson, David Hinton, Eliot Weinberger, among others.
Our first book will be Burton Watson’s Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-Shan.
Please send me a message if you are interested in joining us in 2015.
I climb the road to Cold Mountain,
The road to Cold Mountain that never ends.
The valleys are long and strewn with stones;
The streams broad and banked with thick grass.
Moss is slippery, though no rain has fallen;
Pines sigh, but it isn’t the wind.
Who can break from the snares of the world
And sit with me among the white clouds?
–Han-Shan
translated by Burton Watson
