Poetry and Painted Dreams

This work, Poetry in the Painted Mirror, takes you through the vermilion-ruled pages of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries and into the lives of thirty-three great poets. You will witness how the golden age of the High Tang, captured in “Clouds suggest her gown, flowers suggest her face,” emerged from the golden cup Li Bai smashed at the Hanlin Academy; how Li Qingzhao, by the rail of the boat crossing the river, embroidered the anguish of “To this day I think of Xiang Yu” into the Postscript to the Records of Metal and Stone; and why the withered lotuses by Nalan Xingde's Green Water Pavilion became the timeless line, “If only life were as it was at first meeting.”