By a Lake Near a Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters

Author: DeWitt Clinton

Publisher: Is a Rose Press (2020)

In By a Lake Near a Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters, a collection of 114 poems—variations based on Kenneth Rexroth's translation, 100 Poems from the Chinese (New Directions, 1971), poet DeWitt Clinton recasts the poems within the contemporary landscape of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with lyrical scenes of its changing seasons, the Lake Michigan beach front, bridges across the Milwaukee rivers, and roads and highways of the nearby countryside. While the themes of the classical Chinese poets—Tu Fu, Meo Yao Ch'en, Ou Yang Hsiu, Su Tung Po, Li Ch'ing Chao, Lu Yu, Chu Hsi, and Hsu Chao—remain the same, these adaptations derive their life and energy from the modern-day world and through the lens of a contemporary American Midwestern observer.