3.24.2025

lives of the poets

I thought of Chiang Yen who dreamed that Kuo P’o, long
dead, appeared and asked for his writing brush back, and
after he awoke Chiang Yen never wrote poems again.
-
I thought of Tsu Yung who, at his examination, wrote a
a poem of only four lines. Questioned by the examiner, he
replied: “That was all I had to say.”

—Eliot Weinberger, The Life of Tu Fu (New Directions, 2024)

[More excerpts over at Tramp Freighter.]

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