The Poetic Garden of Liu Zongyuan

The Poetic Garden of Liu Zongyuan presents poems by the Tang Dynasty cofounder of the Classical Prose Movement written on the Chinese empire-s southern margins. In these remarkable pieces, Liu intertwines South China-s landscapes and plants-such as scarlet canna, banyan, and white myoga ginger-with reflections on honor, duty, banishment, and belonging in ways unique in the history of Chinese poetry. The two translators, Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton and Yu Yuanyuan, one American and one Chinese, preserve and showcase the singular beauty of Liu''s poetic garden for the English-speaking world.