Selections of Ou-Yang Hsiu’s poetry appear in the collection “Love & Time, The Poems of Ou-Yang Hsiu,” translated by J. P. Seaton, 1989, Copper Canyon Press.
This post is part 1 of 2. Part 1 will cover form and background. Part 2 will cover content, and look closely at one translated poem.
Background: Ou-Yang Hsiu
Ou-Yang Hsiu lived from 1007-1072 in Sung Dynasty China. Raised in poverty and primarily self-educated, he became both a scholar and a government administrator. He was known for his strong code of ethics.
Ou-Yang Hsiu didn’t follow the approved pattern of highly formal poems on limited, conventional subject matter, full of obscure allusions.
Which sounds like about what the non-poetry reader thinks of poetry today. Hard to understand, needing someone to decode it for the reader. Something only for the in-crowd. You can’t really blame people. Schools tend to reinforce this approach. A student deciphers a poem to figure out ‘what it really means’ instead of understanding it, at least on one level, without overly-educated interpretation.