The lyric poetry of Tu Fu ranks with the greatest in all world literature. Across the centuries--Tu Fu lived in the T'ang Dynasty (731-770)--his poems come through to us with an immediacy that is breathtaking in Kenneth Rexroth's English versions. They are as simple as they are profound, as delicate as they are beautiful.
Thirty-five poems by Tu Fu make up the first part of this volume. The translator then moves on to the Sung Dynasty (10th-12th...