If a Mountain Lion Could Sing: The Lyric Poems of Xin Qiji

by Xin Qiji, Red Pine (Translator)

Overview

If a Mountain Lion Could Sing stands as the first major English translation of poems written by China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji.

World-renowned translator Red Pine has found a new dance partner. His latest bilingual collection, If a Mountain Lion Could Sing, boasts 126 poems by swordsman, visionary, and China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji. Paying respects at the poet’s grave and visiting the very places where Xin composed his stanzas—the cassia trees of the Wu River, houseboats along the Yangzi, mountain monasteries—Red Pine makes a physical and spiritual exercise of translation. Written over 800 years ago, and to melodies since lost, Xin’s verses still leap across centuries, mapping real and interior landscapes, relaying universal concepts of duty and solitude, love and nostalgia. Though “true mirrors are hard to come by,” Xin’s poems serve as haunting reflections of a man who sang with “heroic abandon.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556596865
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bill Porter (Red Pine) was born in Los Angeles in 1943. While attending graduate school at Columbia University, he became interested in Buddhism and moved to Taiwan, where he began translating Chinese poetry and spiritual texts under the name Red Pine. Since returning to America in 1993, he has worked as an independent scholar. Among the awards his books have received are the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation and the Special Book Award of China. He is the translator of numerous volumes, including, most recently, Dancing with the Dead: Essential Red Pine and Choosing to Be Simple: Collected Poems of Tao Yuanming.

Xin Qiji was born in the city of Jinan in 1140 CE and grew up in the northern half of China. He was a fierce soldier in his youth, and in later life committed himself to poetry, adding words to popular melodies. During his own lifetime four editions of his lyric poems appeared in print, and he has ever since been acknowledged as China’s greatest practitioner of this genre.

Editorial Reviews

Bill Porter has been one of the most prolific translators of Chinese texts, while also developing into a travel writer with a cult following.”—New York Times

“Tao’s impeccable translator Red Pine follows the traditional Chinese practice of offering scholarly commentary for each poem, but what persists in the transmutation to present-day English is less the discord of bygone dynasties than the poet’s quest for spiritual harmony, as in the longed-for utopia of ‘Peach Blossom Spring’: ‘I’ll go there as soon as the weather is warmer / hopefully with someone who knows me.’”—Literary Hub

“In the travel writing that has made him so popular in China, Porter’s tone is not reverential but explanatory, and filled with luminous asides.”—New York Review of Books

“The latest work in Red Pine’s rich career of translation, Choosing to be Simple: Collected Poems of Tao Yuanming, is a definitive portrait of the early Chinese politician and poet. . . . We are encouraged to find joy in simplicity—the tending of a garden, the sharing of wine with a stranger.” —New York Journal of Books 

“Red Pine’s out-of-the-mainstream work is canny and clearheaded, and it has immeasurably enhanced Zen/Daoist literature and practice.”—Kyoto Journal

“With its clarity and scholarly range, this version of the Taoteching works as both a readable text and a valuable resource of Taoist interpretation.”—Publishers Weekly

“Red Pine . . . has given us the first full collection of Han Shan’s songs in an idiom that is clear, graceful, and neutral enough to last . . . His translations are accurate and mirror the music of the originals.”—Bloomsbury Review

“In Red Pine’s hands, these poems are revitalized.”—Ellipsis

From the Publisher