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Showing posts from February, 2023

Quote: Wong May on Tang Dynasty poetry

  "In times of continual, rampant warfare, a retreat to Nature was a necessary strategy. If the poets seek refuge in Nature, it must also be evident that Nature seeks refuge in a Tang poem; the temptation of a 20-word quatrain--for infinite Nature to come to rest in a 4x5 grid, just so; a sight to behold."   --Poet and translator Wong May, from her book In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century  

Quote: from the Zhuangzi

Consider the gaps and cracks and hollows in things: it is in the empty chambers that light appears, and all auspicious things come to roost only where there is stillness. --from the classic Daoist text, the Zhuangzi , Chapter 4, translated by Brook Ziporyn