The incomparable poetry of Han Shan and his sidekick Shih-Te, the rebel poets who became icons of Chinese poetry and Zen, newly translated and annotated by premier translator J. P.
Seaton.
Popularized in the West by Beat Generation writers Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, China’s “outsider” poets Han Shan (known as Cold Mountain) and his sidekick Shi-Te, who lived in the T’ang era
(618—907), have long captured the imagination of poetry lovers and Zen aficionados. These legendary figures of Chinese literature and Zen–portrayed as the laughing, ragged pair who left their
poetry on stones, trees, farmhouses, and the walls of the monasteries they visited and then disappeared into a cave forever–expressed in the simplest verse but in a completely new tone, the
voice of ordinary people.
In Cold Mountain Poems, the premier translator J. P. Seaton takes a fresh look at these captivating poets, along with Wang Fan-chih, another outsider poet who lived a couple centuries
later and who captured the poverty and gritty day-to-day reality of the common people of his time. Cold Mountain Poems is a vibrant, wide-ranging collection that will immediately
resonate for the contemporary reader. Seaton is a lively commentator and his comprehensive introduction and notes throughout give a fascinating context to this collection.
