Book details

  • Genre:poetry
  • Sub-genre:Asian / Chinese
  • Language:English
  • Pages:196
  • eBook ISBN:9798995488934
  • Paperback ISBN:9798995488927

Facing the Moon

Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu

By Keith Holyoak

Overview

Facing the Moon: Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu brings together English translations of China's two master poets. This bilingual collection pairs each poem with its original Chinese text, complemented by calligraphy and traditional ink paintings. Published to mark the twentieth anniversary of its first edition, this expanded volume includes several newly added longer poems, an introduction to the poets and their legacy, and a bibliography. What sets Holyoak's translations apart is their dedication to structural fidelity alongside poetic meaning. Rather than adopting free verse or conventional English rhyme schemes, they carefully approximate the metric form and rhyme patterns of the classical originals.
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Description

What can a poem written more than a thousand years ago reveal about friendship, longing, love, loss, and the fleeting beauty of life? Facing the Moon: Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu brings together the work of two celebrated poets of China's Tang dynasty in a bilingual collection, presenting the original Chinese poems alongside their English translations. Li Bai, renowned for his vivid imagination, lyrical freedom, and fascination with nature, offers moments of wonder, solitude, and spirited reflection. Du Fu, celebrated for his emotional depth and observations of human life, brings another perspective shaped by friendship, personal hardship, family, and the turbulence of his times. Together, their poems reveal two distinctive poetic voices whose work continues to resonate across centuries. From moonlit nights and mountain landscapes to the sorrow of separation and the enduring value of friendship, these poems explore experiences that remain recognizable to modern readers. Their brevity is part of their power: a few carefully shaped lines can capture an entire mood, a fleeting image, or a profound truth about being human.
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About The Author

Keith Holyoak is a cognitive scientist, poet, and translator of classical Chinese poetry. He is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow. His recent book, The Human Edge (MIT Press, 2025), explores how the mind creates meaning through analogy, He is also the author of Oracle Bones: Poems from the Time of Misrule, a collection of "pseudo-translations" that uses an ancient Chinese tradition to satirize the state of current American politics. Holyoak grew up on a dairy farm in British Columbia, earned his B.A. from the University of British Columbia and Ph.D. from Stanford, and taught at the University of Michigan before joining UCLA.
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