Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Contributor

David Hinton

Contributor

David Hinton

David Hinton has translated many volumes of classical Chinese poetry, and he is the first translator in over a century to translate the four seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, and Mencius. His most recent books are Fossil Sky, a poem composed on a large maplike sheet (Archipelago); The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-jan (Archipelago)...

; and Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (Counterpoint). The poems featured here are from The Mountain Poems of Wang Wei, a collection to be published by New Directions in 2005.

Hinton has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1997, he received the Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. Hinton lives in Vermont and has a website at www.davidhinton.org.

Read More

Articles by David Hinton

In Reply to P’ei Ti

Autumn rains darken azure-deep skies.

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

In the Mountains, Sent to Ch’an Brothers and Sisters

Dharma companions filling mountains, / a sangha forms of itself: chanting, sitting

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

In Reply to Su, Who Visited My WheelRim River Hermitage When I Wasn’t There to Welcome Him

When you came on twisted rocky paths, / who welcomed you at my mountain gate?

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

Mourning Yin Yao

Returning you to StoneTower Mountain, we bid farewell

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

BirdCry Creek

In night quiet, spring mountains stand

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

Adrift on the Lake

Crystalline waters quiet settling night. / Moonlight leaving idleness everywhere

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

On Returning to WheelRim River

Frail water-chestnut vines never settle, / and light cottonwood blossoms fly easily.

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

In Reply to Vice-Magistrate Chang

In these twilight years, I love tranquility / alone.

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

Mourning Meng Hao-jan

Now, if I look for old masters here, / I find empty rivers and mountains.

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton

The WheelRim River Sequence

No one seen. In empty mountains, / hints of drifting voice, no more.

Translated from Chinese by David Hinton