As a reader more than a collector, I’m blessed that I enjoy poetry as much as I do. For poetry readers, there is much more reading available in private press books than, say, a reader of novels or other lengthy works gets to choose from. Those longer works just seem to be too large and risky of an undertaking for most private presses. Many things can contribute to the difficulty of tackling large texts: the amount of paper needed, the amount of type that needs to be cast and set, the type of press required, the amount of time for printing and binding, the price point and accompanying risk. Really only one private press comes to mind that regularly does novels and that is the Arion Press. They have the resources to tackle even massive undertaking like Don Quixote in the new Grossman translation. There are others, of course, like Prototype Press’ willingness to undertake Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, Thornwilllow Press publishing Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby, and Sherwin Beach Press’ edition of Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. If you consider fine press there are more novels available with presses like the Folio Society, Centipede Press, the Limited Editions Club, etc., and the reading horizons open up more. And I’ll also add to this reader’s lament that there are plenty of presses out there that are primarily interested in images, or art, or the craft and history of printing, or just plain books as beautiful objects that sometimes are downright un-booklike. Having been to CODEX for the last four or five shows, I’ve seen plenty of that. If I have time, I check it out. Given the funds and the space, I would probably have lots of these books as well. But generally, I bee-line to the CODEX tables that have executed their craft on something readable.
But poetry abounds in the private press world. And to some extent also shorter works of prose like short stories, essays, and novellas. I have reviewed private press books of poetry from Larkspur Press, Barbarian Press, Arion Press, and Littoral Press on The Whole Book Experience. Sometimes the small books that poetry can be realized in are much easier on the budget. Not always though, as Jamie Murphy of the Salvage Press elegantly pointed out in a recent LibraryThing Talk form (Comment 23). Poetry might also present a more interesting challenge to the page designer, whether trying to keep true to a poet’s line-breaks or printing visual/shape poetry or simply working with the balance of the text and the white space to present a beautiful and readable layout. Bi- and tri-lingual editions can add to that challenge of creating a visually pleasing page.
All of this rambling leads me to this Chester River Press edition of Qin Guan’s poetry, Moon as Bright as Water. But first, more backstory! I’m in the tea business, which lends itself naturally to a reader like me being interested in literature from the birthplace of tea. I just so happen to be in the middle of one of the classics of Chinese literature, the massive 4000-page Chin P’ing Mei, with plans to read all of the six classics of Chinese literature. Coincidentally, the Chin P’ing Mei is set during the Northern Sung dynasty around the time Qin Guan lived and wrote his poetry. The Princeton University Press edition I’m reading is full of mentions of tea and of the poetry of the time, so I will be scouring it for references of or allusions to Qin Guan (more on that later). Then at the recent CODEX Book Fair, I dropped by the Mad Parrot Press’ table to see how things were going with their eagerly awaited edition of The Wind in the Willows (Yes! Something to read! And a favorite of mine!). Chad Pastotnik and Jim Dissette of Mad Parrot previously worked with Chester River Press and were responsible for designing and producing the Qin Guan book. In my conversation with Chad at CODEX regarding Wind in the Willows and my fascination with Chinese literature, I happily walked away with a loaner copy of Moon as Bright as Water to review.
Like the racy contents of the Chin P’ing Mei, Qin Guan’s poems were considered vulgar for mentioning or even alluding to closely too sexual adventures. While the directness of prose in the case of the Chin P’ing Mei led it to be suppressed, censored, and abridged for hundreds of years, you would think the metaphor and expressions used in poetry would get past the censors and allow Qin Guan to receive his rightful due as a poet. For instance, when he writes:
Oh how can I get to those / deep fragrant places / where the bee goes in?
–Welcome Spring Music
But he’s not always so subtle:
It melts my soul / to recollect those times / when perfume came dimly from little purses / and thin silk dresses parted easily
Bamboozled as I was / what I did get but a name for bad luck / in all the brothels and wine shops / that will last for a long time?
–All the Garden’s Fragrance
So his writing about courtesans, love, and sex coupled with the tumultuous political times were enough to send his poems into obscurity and the poet himself into lonely exile where he seems to have drank himself to death. Early translations of Chinese literature that was judged racy often got the juicy bits cut out or translated so as fit the translator’s bias and or to protect the delicate minds of their non-Chinese readers. But it’s not all sex, their is love and longing. His poetry reflects his way of dealing with his misfortunes pretty bluntly as well:
Sitting speechless before her wine bottle / trying to get through the day
–Partridge Sky
And
When I finish drinking / I’ll fall asleep / –any objections?– / and though I have ears I won’t hear / the troubles of this world –Another to the tune of All the Garden’s Fragrance
For him in exile and at least for one beloved wife that he left behind, this line from Eight-Six seems to sum up his view of finding happiness:
The pleasures of love run off / with the flowing streams…
–Eight-Six
As pointed out in the Introduction by William McNaughton, Qin Guan is most remembered for his compositions in the poetic form known as ci, or t’zu, which is essentially a lyric written “to the tune” of a song, sometimes literally to the music and sometimes just using the verbal pattern and/or melody from the song. Unsurprisingly given their proximity in time, much of the poetry in the Chin P’ing Mei is also ci. For these “(un)translations”, McNaughton would come up with the “linguistic, musical, rhetorical, and other poetic features” of the original and then have poet David Young compose an “equivalent poem” in English. As such, this is the first time these poems have been produced in English with a fellow poet’s skill and intuition, adding to the richness of the poems. But maybe not endearing them to scholars and purists. But McNaughton feels that this process has allowed Qin Guan to reap the reward of “having your work read 900 years later, or even having it translated into a barbaric language by creatures at the latter end of the world.”
The book as I experienced it was in the standard edition and it is a beauty. The indigo Shizen paper used over the boards is beautiful, especially when the gold batik highlights catch the light. The gold contrasts nicely with the deeply embossed black-inked Chinese character for water. The paper is creamy Hahnemuhle Biblio that shows off the three-color printing of the title page wonderfully. Printing the title using the Chinese characters and in English adds definite appeal and authenticity to the book. I’m no expert in Chinese (mostly it’s characters that have to do with tea and tea names that I am familiar with…) but I do love to ponder translations. I would render the characters of the title as Moon Bright as Water. But that’s what I love about translation! There is probably something I missed or don’t know that caused McNaughton and Young to use Moon as Bright as Water. The line appears in the poem Another to the Tune As Though Dreaming so it may have to do with alliteration, poetic form, or the melody of the tune for the ci. The character for water reappears in a couple other places through the book as well.
As usual for me, the feel of the paper is an extremely important part of the book reading experience and can literally make it a sensual pleasure to turn the page. That’s the case here both with the weight of the paper and it’s tactility.
The layout of the pages is also quite pleasing, with generous margins and uncrowded text to allow the poem to unfold on the page. The use of a printer’s ornament where a break in the poem is called for adds to the aesthetic appeal of some of the poems. And finally, I always love to see multiple colors on the page and the use of black and green for the titling of each poem is very lovely. My only nit here is that the titling seems to have been done without any consistency. Again, these are ci, so most of the titles are of the form “A, to the tune of B”. Most of the poems have “A” and “to the tune of” in black and “B” in green but there is a bit of variation in the color scheme and especially in the capitalization and wording of the phrase “to the tune of.”
All in all, this a beautiful edition of poems by a Chinese master and would be a lovely edition to any library. It’s a small gem in the portfolio of Pastotnik and Dissette that also includes a gorgeous edition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness under the Chester River Press imprint. And as I alluded to in the beginning, I’ll be looking forward to seeing their future books under the new imprint.
AVAILABILITY: The standard edition as reviewed here is available on the website for $650USD and was done in an edition of 65. The deluxe edition is $1000USD, was done in an edition of 10, and looks to also be available. Both can be found here and here.