Cloud Poetry

China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Years, translated by Red Pine

A compilation of Classical Japanese poems dating to around 1230-40 and assembled by the renowned poet and scholar Fujiwara no Taika. In English and Japanese.

Poems from Yanyi’s The Year of Blue Water

Be as true to each other as this dial is to the sun.

Begone about Thy business.

Come along and grow old with me; the best is yet to be.

Hours fly, Flowers die. New days, New ways, Pass by. Love stays.

Hours fly, Flowers bloom and die. Old days, Old ways pass. Love stays.

I only tell of sunny hours.

I count only sunny hours.

Let others tell of storms and showers, I tell of sunny morning hours.

Let others tell of storms and showers, I'll only count your sunny hours.

Life is but a shadow: the shadow of a bird on the wing.

Self-dependent power can time defy, as rocks resist the billows and the sky.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.

Today is Yesterday's Tomorrow

When I am gone, mark not the passing of the hours, but just that love lives on.

The Concern of the Rich and the Poor

A selection of sacred English Jacobean poetry of the Reign of King James the First (1603-1625)

Two short stories by Jennie Egerdie, published in McSweeney’s

Excerpts from “Caste: The origins of our discontents”, in which Wilkerson gives a masterful portrait of the hierarchical caste and racial ranking divisions operating invisibly throughout American society.

Spanning two thousand years—from the Book of Songs (circa 600 B.C.) to the chü form of the Yuan Dynasty (1260–1368)—these 150 poems cover all major genres that students of Chinese poetry must learn. Correcting more than a century of distortion of the classical Chinese by translators unconcerned with the intricacies and aesthetics of the Chinese language, these masterful translations by Wai-lim Yip, a noted and honored translator and scholar, allow English readers to enter more easily into the dynamic of the original poems.

A follower of Epicurus, Lucretius believed the world to be composed of tiny atoms moving in a void and viewed life in terms of pleasure and pain, representing good and bad.

Selected writings and testimonies of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) who founded a school called “The Garden”. He taught that the root of all human neurosis is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should behave ethically not because the gods punish or reward people for their actions, but because amoral behavior will burden them with guilt and prevent them from attaining ataraxia.