thank you…one of my favorites by han shan. also translated by burton watson, red pine and gary snyder in riprap and cold mountain poems. i think he won the pulitzer prize for poetry on this work in 1974. i have a much worn copy of it that he signed after a reading at ucsd in san diego…long long ago!
Thanks for that Gregg. I have been collecting these poems from different books for 40 years, sometimes on my computer, sometimes in notebooks. I generally didn't record which translation I was drawing from. I imagine though this draws from Red Pine/Bill Porter who is my favorite for his overall knowledge of the culture. The original poem that was the inspiration for mine:
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with the scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the midst-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leave the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?
- Han-shan
One of the beautiful features of these poems is the widely different translations offered by different people. They invite those of us who have spent a lot of time in the mountains and on the rivers, especially alone, to offer our own sense of deep meaning that we each find in them.
another reference point on Snyder is that in the early 1970s I was a wilderness Ranger with the forest service in the John Muir wilderness, California., where i carried snyder’s words along with me. The year before I was a YCC crew leader up in the white mountains on the dry side of the Sierra, and on a weekends solo backpack into the drainage north of our camp. I stopped for the night at an unlocked cabin that was open to pretty much anyone, and two Cowboys from deep Springs College rode up and spent the night there also. One of them was reading Gary Snyder‘s work.They were up in that drainage checking on cattle that the Ranch runs on the inyo nf.
We recently watched several surreal NC mountain misty, minature (in comparison to the overhead dwellers) ---cloud pods swim through forest eddys below us before slowly enveloping us too with their meandering presence.
thank you…one of my favorites by han shan. also translated by burton watson, red pine and gary snyder in riprap and cold mountain poems. i think he won the pulitzer prize for poetry on this work in 1974. i have a much worn copy of it that he signed after a reading at ucsd in san diego…long long ago!
Thanks for that Gregg. I have been collecting these poems from different books for 40 years, sometimes on my computer, sometimes in notebooks. I generally didn't record which translation I was drawing from. I imagine though this draws from Red Pine/Bill Porter who is my favorite for his overall knowledge of the culture. The original poem that was the inspiration for mine:
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with the scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the midst-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leave the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?
- Han-shan
One of the beautiful features of these poems is the widely different translations offered by different people. They invite those of us who have spent a lot of time in the mountains and on the rivers, especially alone, to offer our own sense of deep meaning that we each find in them.
yes! i think the translation you shared above is snyder’s. thanks for the note and your work…
another reference point on Snyder is that in the early 1970s I was a wilderness Ranger with the forest service in the John Muir wilderness, California., where i carried snyder’s words along with me. The year before I was a YCC crew leader up in the white mountains on the dry side of the Sierra, and on a weekends solo backpack into the drainage north of our camp. I stopped for the night at an unlocked cabin that was open to pretty much anyone, and two Cowboys from deep Springs College rode up and spent the night there also. One of them was reading Gary Snyder‘s work.They were up in that drainage checking on cattle that the Ranch runs on the inyo nf.
We recently watched several surreal NC mountain misty, minature (in comparison to the overhead dwellers) ---cloud pods swim through forest eddys below us before slowly enveloping us too with their meandering presence.