Henry David Thoreau once wrote: "My profession is to always be alert . . . to attend all the oratorios and the operas in nature." Centuries before him, Li Po (701-762) was praising the beauties and the bounties of the natural world of China during its golden age of poetry.
"The white bird settles on the Autumn waters,
flies alone, settles like a snowflake.
Heart, mind, set, ready: won't go yet.
We stand alone beside the sandy islet."
This sterling collection of poems by Li Po has been edited and translated by J. P. Seaton, Professor Emeritus of Chinese at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In his erudite introduction to this towering creative figure in China's history, he covers Li Po's blossoming as a poet during his teenage years, his love of drinking, his legendary wanderings, his practice of Taoist and Buddhist meditation, and his high respect for friendship. Seaton has arranged the poems into five sections intended to capture aspects of the poet's life: drinking, friendship, philosophy and spirituality, protest, and travel.
<>Here is another example from the section of poems about spirituality:"Ask me how it is I've come to perch in these
blue-green hills,
and I'll smile with no answer; I'm happiest with
heart-and-mind just so, may be. . . .
Peach blossoms float by here, gone into the
quite definite shadows.
There is another world, other than this one we
choose to live in."
