Tu Fu, Poems XVIII-XXI

The full moon, bright as a china plate, hangs in a corner of my bedroom window. I hear tree branches crackle and groan in the cold. Inside, among the hillocks of a feather bed, the moon spreads her pale light.

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As agreed, this week I am going to reignite our Tu Fu conversation. For those new to the project: several readers of this blog spent time last summer slowly reading and discussing Kenneth Rexroth's translations of Tu Fu (712-770), a Chinese poet active during the Tang dynasty. The book we've been using is One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (New Directions, 1971). Today I'm going to restart our engagement slowly, with four short poems, in hopes that none of us gets overwhelmed by too much homework. In a day or so, I'll ask a question or two so we can think about them together.