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This final week with dubiously-attributed Li Qingzhao, she expects fish to carry messages for her as well. There is no end to the free labour Early Modern Chinese people expect from animals they can't even be fucked to domesticate. Also an unintentionally amusing line about romantic 'double nuts'.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.49 - 3.56
Apr. 13th, 2022 10:16 pmFor the penultimate Li Qingzhao week, we get a birthday suck-up song, a weirdly frank description of a hot woman's sweat, and an explanation of the cute 'salt and willow fluff' custom.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.41 - 3.48
Apr. 1st, 2022 10:03 pmThis week on Poetry Club, attribution goes from sketchy to outright dubious. Li Qingzhao (or *is she*??) claims 'fragile innards [have] a thousand threads of sorrow.' What *does* that mean?
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.33 - 3.40
Mar. 20th, 2022 08:32 pmThis week on Poetry Club, Li Qingzhao resents banana trees, claims her topknot 'suffers from the spring', and thinks osmanthus is an unfairly neglected plant.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.25 - 3.32
Mar. 6th, 2022 11:28 pmThis week on Poetry Club, Li Qingzhao is very into Cold Food Day and the idea that geese can be a free-labour postal service.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Feb. 22nd, 2022 08:48 pmI don't think I can stress enough how very, very good Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" is as a collection? Not a bad one in there, and 75% of them were absolutely amazing. If you know the poet vaguely, by reputation, and are interested in this kind of thing at all, I really urge you to spend time with this short cycle of 44 poems.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.17 - 3.24
Feb. 14th, 2022 11:07 pmUntil Thursday, Poetry Club looks at another batch of Li Qingzhao's ci poems (3.17 to 3.24). Qingzhao gets really into plum blossoms, somehow knows a lot about maritime atmospheric conditions for a lady scholar, and still has much to say about drinking problems.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 3.1 - 3.8
Jan. 26th, 2022 10:30 pmThis week in Poetry Club, after having told you how amazing she is at board games Li Qingzhao writes many songs about drinking until you pass out, thus neatly summarising a solid 1/3 of the terrible parties I've been to.
Poetry Club: Li Qingzhao's Prose
Jan. 13th, 2022 12:01 amUntil Sunday, Poetry Club looks at Li Qingzhao's surviving prose: five pieces, including: a discussion of Chinese board games circa 1130 CE, a short memoir on book collecting/marriage, and a letter explaining why Qingzhao got a man who beat her tried for treason.
POETRY CLUB: LI QINGZHAO, 13 - 18
Dec. 18th, 2021 03:25 amSunday we wrap up talking about Week 3 of the Works of Li Qingzhao. That's the final set of shi poems, 1.13 to 1.18. Monday, we begin discussing her prose. Yes! Prose! On poetry club! These truly are the complete twerks...
Poetry Club: Li Qingzhao, 6-12
Dec. 6th, 2021 10:25 amThis week on poetry club, Li Qingzhao moans that no one gets her and writes lengthly unsolicited political advice. De Gruyter really needs to copy edit, but does not do that.
This week Poetry Club begins looking at Li Qingzhao, arguably the greatest female classical Chinese poet. Early Years Li Qingzhao writes bitchy political commentary accidentally foreshadowing her own time in exile. Oops.
Week 2 of 2 for 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei.
I get mad at people over-rating Pound, Octavio Paz weighs in, and as usual, every Chinese plant is 'grass'.
We can extend the deadline because I posted this late if people want, but my inclination is to let it ride. We have all weekend, this week's reading is short.
I get mad at people over-rating Pound, Octavio Paz weighs in, and as usual, every Chinese plant is 'grass'.
We can extend the deadline because I posted this late if people want, but my inclination is to let it ride. We have all weekend, this week's reading is short.
Poetry Club is on week 1 of 2 on Eliot Weinberger's "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei", a short, interesting book about the choices involved in translation.
My new-laid phone screen’s cracked, mirror-like, from side to side
Gulls wheel above the train, and black-faced sheep graze good earth bare.
There was no time for coffee, as there never is when you need it.
The first time I am able to leave the city in two years, I eat a large, awful pastry.
Disliking it means that I can taste it, and likely don’t have plague.
Eating it means I am still alive.
The station, when we come to it, has a maintenance shed. Wires feed in; trail out. The holes in the roof must let the rain in.
Nothing in England has been cared for since before my birth. I have no expectation, anymore, of better.
From a spine-knobbed clump of cloud, wisps spread like butterflied ribs.
Life is exactly what it is, and lasts exactly as long as it does.
My phone is old, and loses power easily. I have two more trains before me. A boat, and then a car.
Your calling me is not a good idea right now.
This week on Poetry Club, Du Fu hits us with not one but TWO poems about paintings of horses. He is still depressed about being underemployed.
This week's poetry club features Du Fu's crush on Chu-ko Liang, who will not fuck Du Fu because he's very dead, the monsterfucker energy of 'hornlike protuberances on the forehead indicating a person destined to become emperor', and Li He seeming like more trouble than he's worth.
This week, Du Fu devotes three poems in a row to his giant crush on Li Bai. There's still a war on or something, but more importantly: Li Bai.
Public Domain Chinese Poetry Translations
Oct. 10th, 2021 01:55 am Some very exciting public domain Chinese Poetry translations, with substantial introductions and footnotes.
This includes:
- more Du Fu than you could ever want - Li Qingzhao: China's Foremost Woman Poet - one of the Caos, who I know are pivotal in the transition from Shi Jing shit to proper antiquity, but who, without a dedicated volume, I didn't really know how to approach
- noted Tang crazy bitch Li He; "poems famously explored ghostly, supernatural&fantastic themes." kicked out of Tang 300 for being too Weird - "Ruan Ji is usually mentioned first among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The other sages were Xi Kang his lover" a combo book for this queer couple!
This includes:
- more Du Fu than you could ever want - Li Qingzhao: China's Foremost Woman Poet - one of the Caos, who I know are pivotal in the transition from Shi Jing shit to proper antiquity, but who, without a dedicated volume, I didn't really know how to approach
- noted Tang crazy bitch Li He; "poems famously explored ghostly, supernatural&fantastic themes." kicked out of Tang 300 for being too Weird - "Ruan Ji is usually mentioned first among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The other sages were Xi Kang his lover" a combo book for this queer couple!
