Wei Yingwu

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wéi.

Wei Yingwu (traditional Chinese: 韋應物; simplified Chinese: 韦应物; pinyin: Wéi Yìngwù; Wade–Giles: Wei Ying-wu; 737–792) was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Twelve of Wei's poems have been included in the Three Hundred Tang Poems anthology.

Poetry

Wei Yingwu poems collected in Three Hundred Tang Poems were translated by Witter Bynner as:

• "Entertaining Literary Men in my Official Residence on a Rainy Day"
• "Setting Sail on the Yangzi to Secretary Yuan"
• "A Poem to a Taoist Hermit Chuanjiao Mountain"
• "On Meeting my Friend Feng Zhu in the Capital"
• "Mooring at Twilight in Yuyi District"
• "East of the Town"
• "To my Daughter on Her Marriage Into the Yang Family"
• "A Greeting on the Huai River to my Old Friends from Liangchuan"
• "A Farewell in the Evening Rain to Li Cao"
• "To my Friends Li Dan and Yuanxi"
• "An Autumn Night Message to Qiu"
• "At Chuzhou on the Western Stream"

Biography

According to John C. H. Wu, the turbulence and lack of strong central leadership of China during Wei Yingwu's poetry-writing years was a major influencing factor upon his work. One example of such sociopolitical turmoil is the An Shi Rebellion of 755-763. Wu suggests that images such as the boat moving without a person steering in "At Chuzhou on the Western Stream" is a reference to the ship of state without a person at the helm.

Translations

Wei Yingwu was translated by Red Pine (Bill Porter) as In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), for which he won the Best Translated Book Award, from the book translation press of the University of Rochester; and the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)'s inaugural Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize in 2010.

References

• Wu, John C. H. (1972). The Four Seasons of Tang Poetry. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E.Tuttle. ISBN 978-0-8048-0197-3

External links

• Works by Wei Yingwu at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)