The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

By Cold Mountain (Han Shan) and Hanshan

Book Overview

A Zen-Taoist poetry classic, in a handsome Chinese-English format

This definitive translation of Han Shan's poetry appears in a bilingual Chinese-English format. Included are extensive notes, a preface by renowned translator Red Pine, a findings list, and photographs of the cave and surrounding area where Han Shan ("Cold Mountain") lived.

Cold Mountain is one of the most revered poets in China. He was a Taoist/Buddhist hermit who begged for food at temples, often sang and drank with cowherds, and became an immortal figure in the history of Chinese literature and Zen. His poems were written twelve-hundred years ago on the rocks, trees, and temple walls of China's Tientai Mountains. This revised edition also includes poems by Han Shan's colleagues, Pickup (Shih-te) and Big Stick (Feng-kan), translated here for the first time.

As Red Pine begins his Preface, "If China's literary critics were put in charge of organizing a tea for their country's greatest poets of the past, Cold Mountain would not be on many invitation lists. Yet no other poet occupies the altars of China's temples and shines, where his statue often stands alongside immortals and bodhisattvas. He is equally revered in Korea and Japan. And when Jack Kerouac dedicated The Dharma Bums to him in 1958, Cold Mountain became the guardian angel of a generation of Westerners as well."

Reviews of Red Pine's Collected Songs of Cold Mountain:

"The translator's preface describes his rendition of the life of Cold Mountain, offering an excellent historical and philosophical context for the simple yet profound poems attributed to the poet."--Library Journal

"These are poems one must taste fully and drink whole... The poems of Han-shan read like a journal or memoir, and they often work as Zen koans, challenging the mind to go beyond the words and reason."--Parabola

"Red Pine... has given us the first full collection of Han Shan's songs in an idiom that is clear, graceful, and neutral enough to last... His translations are accurate and mirror the music of the originals... The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain is a considerable performance and a truly valuable book. Thanks to Copper Canyon's high standards of bookmaking, it is beautiful to hold and behold; thanks to Red Pine's care, it will survive as the definitive text of Han Shan in English for many years. It belongs on the shelf of everyone with an interest in poetry and... should be opened often."--The Bloomsbury Review

"An exquisite publication that captures the Taoist practice of passionate attention, of being still inside and relaxed in the comforts and discomforts around you, going nowhere else... We discover this in the poet's vision and spirit, in the precision and balance of the translator's scholarship and heart, and in the elegant wilderness of the bookmaker's art around them. On every level this is a beautiful book."--Judges' comments on awarding the WESTAF Award in Translation

"Cold Mountain's colloquial poetry...sound like inspired raps--marvelously direct, with skips, jumps, verbal nudges and abrupt revelations... The volume is beautifully produced, with a long and careful introduction... This is an indispensable book."--The Berkeley Monthly

"More than anyone else, Red Pine has made Han Shan's] spontaneous poems accessible to Western readers... In this new, expanded edition, invaluable notes and an extensive new critical preface provide a contextual awareness, not just for the poems, but for their sources in Buddhist and Confucian culture."--Inquiring Mind

Red Pine is one of the world's leading translators of Chinese literary and religious texts. His other translations include Lao-tzu's Taoteching (isbn 9781556592904) and Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse (isbn 9781556591952).

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556595522
• ISBN13: 9781556595523
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Better than the last

I have read the other translations. Red Pine not only got it right, he also got all the hidden messages. He went to the cave. This book is the Cold Mountain book. For readers that bought any other of these books, get this. I wish this book was a NY Times best seller. Reads well and is complete

A Masterful Translation in a Beautiful Volume

It seems inevitable that something will always be lost in translation. At least I thought this was true until I purchased this volume. Not only does Red Pine stay true to the beauty of Han-Shan's verse, but the underlying Zen essence comes through loud and clear. I have heard it said of the Tao Te Ching that you can spend a day reading the entire work and a lifetime trying to truly understand it. This is also true for these poems. Short verses of simple construction that manage to capture something so vast. No, not capture. Illustrate. In several lines the universe is displayed before us, if only we pause to look. This edition is as much a must for any seek to understand Asian religion as it is for those who love Asian poetry.

Red Pine grasps Cold Mountain.

Twelve hundred years ago, Chinese recluse-poet Han Shan ("Cold Mountain") "fled to the woods to dwell and gaze in freedom" (poem 26), where he also wrote the 307 poems collected here "on trees and rocks and walls" (p. 9) around the cave where he lived. In 1974, while living in a Taipei monastery as a Buddhist monk, Bill Porter (a.k.a. "Red Pine") began translating Cold Mountain's poems.Red Pine breathes new life into Cold Mountain. "I enjoy the simple life," Cold Mountain writes in poem 224, "between dark vines and mountain caves/ the wilderness has room to roam/ with white clouds for companions/ there's a road but not to town." It is easy to appreciate Cold Mountain's verse not only for its "spiritual honesty, poignancy, and humor" (p. 15), as Red Pine observes, but also for its rich, natural imagery. White clouds cling to dark rocks (poem 1), and old pines cling to crags (poem 256). Cicadas sing (poem 300). Yellow leaves fall (poem 300). "My mind is like the autumn moon/ clear and bright in a pool of jade" (poem 5).In a recent interview, Red Pine compares Chinese hermits to "a mountain spring that brings fresh water down into town" (Tricycle, Winter 2000, p. 69). Cold Mountain is a good teacher, and his poems offer insightful lessons. He writes: "Trust your own true nature" (poem 2). "Rock sugar and clarified butter/ mean nothing when you're dead" (poem 8). "The moon is the hub of the mind" (poem 10). "Silence thoughts and the spirit becomes clear/ focus on emptiness and the world grows still" (poem 82). "Drop a ball of mud in water/ and behold the thoughtless mind" (poem 86). "Retiring to my hut I accept white hair" (poem 122). "The world is full of busy people/ well-versed in countless views/ blind to their true natures" (poem 132). "People who wander among clouds/ don't have to buy the hills" (poem 219). Red Pine's collection will become an well-travelled path on your bookshelf to contemplative, Cold Mountain. (It is easy to understand why Jack Kerouac dedicated his DHARMA BUMS to Cold Mountain in 1958.) For those interested in meeting other Chinese hermits, I recommend Porter's ROAD TO HEAVEN: ENCOUNTERS WITH CHINESE HERMITS (1993). For some contemporary poetry reminiscent of Cold Mountain, I recommend David Budbill's recent MOMENT TO MOMENT (2000).G. Merritt

At Last!

The two-year wait for this reissue has been well worth it; the book is as well done as Mr. Porter's Zen Works of Stonehouse. I have all Mr. Porter's work and will acquire anything he publishes. This is what translation should be! The books are superbly annotated, as is this one. I've for years enjoyed Burton Watson's Cold Mountain translation, but with all due respect to the venerable Mr. W., Red Pine has given us a truly thorough and thought-provoking work that goes far beyond earlier translations both in style and content. The themes of the poems are likely well known to the interested reader; what places this book at the top of its class are the annotations, the facing text in Chinese and the evocative, excellent photos by Steven Johnson that have graced other books by Mr. Porter. This book is a work to be read and reread: in short, it's a keeper.

As mentioned above: this is a revised and expanded version

Red Pine recently released a bookTHE ZEN WORKS OF STONEHOUSE, which includes a "re-working" of his translation of Stonehouse's poetry. The original translation was so superb(a clear window through which to both hear this great Zen master's teaching, and also to watch his daily life flow by and see what such a life is like) that I've regarded it for years as the l book I would ask to keep if I had to dispose of all the other 200+ books on Zen which I make use of. The new book has a version of the poetry which is superbly further polished -- genuinely improving the marvelous earlier version. Since THE COLLECTED SONGS OF COLD MOUNTAIN, is both revised and expanded this too should be a solid gold treasure as, once again, the earlier version of Cold Mountain's poetry by Red Pine was already superb.