Chinese Erotic Poems - Hardcover

by Tony Barnstone (Editor), Chou Ping (Editor), Tony Barnstone (Translator)

A dazzling collection of Chinese erotic poems about deep love and pure lust, enticement and seduction, ecstasy and disappointment, that span nearly three thousand years and include many poems never before translated into English.

The ancient Chinese tradition of erotic poetry has been largely ignored in the west. Now, a vast continent of sensual verse is opened to us with this glorious collection spanning nearly Here are poems that express need, hunger, grief, and longing--for husbands and wives and for concubines and lovers; poems by turns explicit or subtle, light-hearted or desperate, written from both men's and women's points of view. The editors have drawn on a wide range of sources from 600 BCE to the present, including highly literary poems, popular verse, and folk songs, as well as poems that appeared in ancient Daoist sex manuals, in classical novels of the Ming Dynasty, and in collections of erotic prints. The result is an array of voices that speak the universal language of desire.

Author Biography

TONY BARNSTONE is Professor of English at Whittier College and the recipient of the Pushcart Prize in Poetry as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. His books include Sad Jazz: Sonnets; Impure: Poems by Tony Barnstone; The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry; Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry; Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei; The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters; and the textbooks Literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Literatures of Asia, and Literatures of the Middle East.

CHOU PING took his doctorate in Asian literature from Stanford University and his MFA in creative writing from Indiana University and has taught at Reed College, Oberlin College and Washington University, among other places. His books include The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry and The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.