Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine

Bill Porter (Red Pine)

Red Pine is one of the world’s finest translators of Chinese poetic and religious texts. His new anthology, Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine, gathers over thirty voices from the ancient Chinese past—including Buddhist poets Cold Mountain (Hanshan) and Stonehouse (Shiwu), as well as Tang-dynasty luminaries Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan. Featuring a preface by National Book Award winner Ha Jin and selected translations of Chinese poetry ranging from Red Pine’s earliest work (1983) to his forthcoming work on Tao Yuanming, the anthology is filled with insight, humor, and musicality that continues to resonate thousands of years later. 

Throughout the book, poems are accompanied by footnotes providing historical context, and each section includes a new and illuminating introduction chronicling Red Pine’s relationship to the poet—discovery, travel, scholarship. Dancing With The Dead is more than a book, it is a journey: part travel essay, part road map, part guided meditation. It is a history translated into a poem.

Paperback: $22.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556596452

Format: Paperback

from The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse

88

It’s something no one can force

besides knowing it’s there there’s nothing to know

seeing the moon above a flowering plum 

it’s too late to look at the blossoms.

 

89

What’s gone is already gone

and what hasn’t come needs no thought

right now I’m writing a right-now line

the plums are ripe and gardenias in bloom.

About the Author

Bill Porter assumes the pen name Red Pine for his translation work. He was born in Los Angeles in 1943, grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, served a tour of duty in the US Army, graduated from the University of California with a degree in anthropology, and attended graduate school at Columbia University. Uninspired by the prospect of an academic career, he dropped out of Columbia and moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. After four years with the monks …

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