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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.

Articles by David Hinton

In Reply to P’ei Ti
By Wang Wei
Autumn rains darken azure-deep skies.
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
In the Mountains, Sent to Ch’an Brothers and Sisters
By Wang Wei
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
By Wang Wei
When you came on twisted rocky paths, / who welcomed you at my mountain gate?
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
Mourning Yin Yao
By Wang Wei
Returning you to StoneTower Mountain, we bid farewell
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
BirdCry Creek
By Wang Wei
In night quiet, spring mountains stand
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
Adrift on the Lake
By Wang Wei
Crystalline waters quiet settling night. / Moonlight leaving idleness everywhere
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
On Returning to WheelRim River
By Wang Wei
Frail water-chestnut vines never settle, / and light cottonwood blossoms fly easily.
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
In Reply to Vice-Magistrate Chang
By Wang Wei
In these twilight years, I love tranquility / alone.
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
Mourning Meng Hao-jan
By Wang Wei
Now, if I look for old masters here, / I find empty rivers and mountains.
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton
The WheelRim River Sequence
By Wang Wei
No one seen. In empty mountains, / hints of drifting voice, no more.
Translated from Chinese by David Hinton