The Selected Poems of Du Fu

Du Fu (712–777) has been called China's greatest poet, and some call him the greatest nonepic, nondramatic poet whose writings survive in any language. Du Fu excelled in a great variety of poetic forms, showing a richness of language ranging from elegant to colloquial, from allusive to direct. His impressive breadth of subject matter includes intimate personal detail as well as a great deal of historical information—which earned him the epithet "poet-historian." Some 1,400 of Du Fu's poems survive today, his fame resting on about one hundred that have been widely admired over the centuries. Preeminent translator Burton Watson has selected 127 poems, including those for which Du Fu is best remembered and lesser-known works.

Burton Watson is one of the most respected translators of Chinese and Japanese literature. He has translated Chinese and Japanese classics such as Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Ryo¯kan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, and The Lotus Sutra.
Ryuichi Abe is Kao Associate Professor of Japanese Religious Studies in the Departments of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He is the coauthor of Great Fool: Zen Master Ryokan -Poems, Letters, and Other Writings, and has been a recipient of the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Award for distinguished teaching.