Li Pai 200 Selected Poems Author:Li Po The wonderous Tang poet Li Pai, also known as Li Po, was of a Szechuan provincial family. However, he himself was born in the Central Asian town of Sujah. Disgusted with the growing corruption of the court at Changan, he sought for the better way amongst the people, the mountains and the streams, catching much of their spirit. His period, 701-76... more »2 AD, was one when poetry seized popular imagination, and, ever since then, his lines have continued to do so.
There have been many translations of Li Pai's poems. They often carry various artifices of the translator's themselves, doing discredit to Li Pai's style which is like "Lotus out of water, so natural without makeup." This particular translation for popular use, as the translator, Rewi Alley, intends it to be, aims at a truthrendering in teh simplest possible language of Li's poems, bringing out the spirit of the poet for people's understanding.« less