The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape
An exploration of the emerging Western consciousness of how deeply we belong to the wild Cosmos, as seen through the lineage of modern America's great avant-garde poets —a thrilling journey with today's premier translator of the Chinese classics.

Henry David Thoreau, in The Maine Woods, describes a moment on Mount Ktaadin when all explanations and assumptions fell away for him and he was confronted with the wonderful, inexplicable thusness of things. David Hinton takes that moment as the starting point for his account of a rewilding of consciousness in the West: a dawning awareness of our essential oneness with the world around us. Because there was no Western vocabulary for this perception, it fell to poets to make the first efforts at articulation, and those efforts were largely driven by Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist ideas imported from ancient China. Hinton chronicles this rewilding through the lineage of avant-garde poetry in twentieth-century America—from Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Robinson Jeffers to Gary Snyder, W. S. Merwin, and beyond—including generous selections of poems that together form a compelling anthology of ecopoetry. In his much-admired translations, Hinton has re-created ancient Chinese rivers-and-mountains poetry as modern American poetry; here, he reenvisions modern American poetry as an extension of that ancient Chinese tradition: an ecopoetry that weaves consciousness into the Cosmos in radical and fundamental ways.
1124692415
The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape
An exploration of the emerging Western consciousness of how deeply we belong to the wild Cosmos, as seen through the lineage of modern America's great avant-garde poets —a thrilling journey with today's premier translator of the Chinese classics.

Henry David Thoreau, in The Maine Woods, describes a moment on Mount Ktaadin when all explanations and assumptions fell away for him and he was confronted with the wonderful, inexplicable thusness of things. David Hinton takes that moment as the starting point for his account of a rewilding of consciousness in the West: a dawning awareness of our essential oneness with the world around us. Because there was no Western vocabulary for this perception, it fell to poets to make the first efforts at articulation, and those efforts were largely driven by Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist ideas imported from ancient China. Hinton chronicles this rewilding through the lineage of avant-garde poetry in twentieth-century America—from Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Robinson Jeffers to Gary Snyder, W. S. Merwin, and beyond—including generous selections of poems that together form a compelling anthology of ecopoetry. In his much-admired translations, Hinton has re-created ancient Chinese rivers-and-mountains poetry as modern American poetry; here, he reenvisions modern American poetry as an extension of that ancient Chinese tradition: an ecopoetry that weaves consciousness into the Cosmos in radical and fundamental ways.
24.95 In Stock
The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape

The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape

by David Hinton
The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape

The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape

by David Hinton

Paperback

$24.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    In stock. Ships in 6-10 days.
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

An exploration of the emerging Western consciousness of how deeply we belong to the wild Cosmos, as seen through the lineage of modern America's great avant-garde poets —a thrilling journey with today's premier translator of the Chinese classics.

Henry David Thoreau, in The Maine Woods, describes a moment on Mount Ktaadin when all explanations and assumptions fell away for him and he was confronted with the wonderful, inexplicable thusness of things. David Hinton takes that moment as the starting point for his account of a rewilding of consciousness in the West: a dawning awareness of our essential oneness with the world around us. Because there was no Western vocabulary for this perception, it fell to poets to make the first efforts at articulation, and those efforts were largely driven by Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist ideas imported from ancient China. Hinton chronicles this rewilding through the lineage of avant-garde poetry in twentieth-century America—from Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Robinson Jeffers to Gary Snyder, W. S. Merwin, and beyond—including generous selections of poems that together form a compelling anthology of ecopoetry. In his much-admired translations, Hinton has re-created ancient Chinese rivers-and-mountains poetry as modern American poetry; here, he reenvisions modern American poetry as an extension of that ancient Chinese tradition: an ecopoetry that weaves consciousness into the Cosmos in radical and fundamental ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611804607
Publisher: Shambhala
Publication date: 07/25/2017
Pages: 328
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Hinton’s many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the texture and density of the originals. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the five seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: I Ching, Tao Te ChingChuang TzuAnalects, and Mencius. Hinton has received many national awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, both major awards for poetry translation, and most recently, a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Table of Contents

These Very Wilds 1

Procreant Wilds Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 15

China Wilds Ezra Pound (1885-1972) 25

Local Wilds William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) 39

Coastal Wilds Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) 57

Mountain Wilds Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) 75

Mind Wilds Charles Olson (1910-1970) 91

No-Mind Wilds John Cage (1912-1992) 117

Wild Wilds Cary Snyder (1950-) 135

Mammal Wilds Michael MeClure (1932-) 157

Primal Wilds Jerome Rothenberg (1931-) 179

Nameless Wilds W. S. Merwin (1927-) 203

Meaningless Wilds A. R. Amnions (1926-2001) 221

Contact Wilds Larry Eigner (1927-1996) 241

Mosaic Wilds Ronald Johnson (1935-1998) 263

Origin Wilds Gustaf Sobin (1935-2005) 285

Itself Wilds 311

Credits 318

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews