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Gabriel Jurkić The Passage to Eternity

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Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Night Mare, 2019

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Do you read chinese classical poetry? Do you have any suggestions where to start?

These are some of my favorite poets:

Du Fu

T'ao Ch'ien

Li Bai

Li Qingzhao

Su Shi/Su Tung-p’o

Du Mu (II)

Li Po

You can also start with several collections:

Classic of Poetry/Odes (trans. Ezra Pound)

Nineteen Old Poems

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Songs of the South (this is one of my absolute favorites)

These are some anthology/reference books:

Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, David Hinton

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, Zong-qi Cai

Autumn Willows: Poetry by Women of China’s Golden Age, Bannie Chow, Thomas Cleary

Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China, David Hinton

Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems, Arthur Cooper; Shui Chien-Tung

Three Chinese Poets: Translations of poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, Vikram Seth

Five T’ang Poets, David Young

Personally, I started with an anthology of Du Fu’s poetry (in Spanish, here - also several Tang poets), and then started reading the collections by David Hinton and Vikram Seth. Afterwards, I continued with Li Po, Li Qinzhao, Su Shi, and the classical Tang poetry collections. 

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Sunflowers, c. 1982. Andrew Wyeth. Watercolor and pencil on paper

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Cairngorms by Kyle Bonallo (ig: @kylebonallo)

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Vardges Petrosyan, Years Lived and Unlived (translated by metamorphesque)

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Vardges Petrosyan, Years Lived and Unlived (translated by metamorphesque)

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"Good morning, Jack. How was your night?", Vardges Petrosyan (translated by metamorphesque)

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Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Abiah Root (May 1848)

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Louis Welden Hawkins - Procession of souls (1890)

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Arnold Böcklin - Ruins by the Sea (1880)

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Aron Wiesenfeld: The Pond (2023)

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Norman Parkinson for Vogue UK (1974)

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At Evening’s Close by Helen Beatrix Potter (ca. 1902).

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Cascade Head, USA by Terry Cartwright

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Broadbottom, England by Greg Ward

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national geographic  january  1976