ABSTRACT
In this part of the book we move away from modern texts to a very special genre which lies at the heart of all literate cultures. The poetry of all ages can tell us much about the cultural energy of a people. We begin with traditional forms of Chinese poetry, known and loved for thousands of years, and still read and written. The reason why we have included ancient poetry, while we have not considered ancient literature or philosophy or history, is because of the strong link between twentieth-century translations of traditional Chinese poems and twentieth-century Chinese poetry. This will be discussed in Chapter 14.
