Which brings up my main problem with this collection: there simply isn't enough of them! I found that once I was really getting into each of these poets, the well here ran dry. It's a nice sampling of these two poets output, aided by Coopers notes and introduction, which helps even those who know next to nothing about Chinese poetry - myself included - get into these poems. On the whole, this is an interesting collection. And the first half of this book is a lengthy introduction by Cooper, covering not only the basics of these two poets, but is a good primer for Chinese poetry as a whole, ranging from early works like Songs of the South to poets of the T'ang dynasty. It collects a healthy sampling of the two poets, but it's only a sampling: each poet is represented by about 50 pages worth of poems, with most of that space taken up with Arthur Cooper's voluminous annotations. Penguin's compilation of the poetry of Li Po and Tu Fu isn't quite what it appears at first.
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