Features 1,000 poems from the oldest Japanese poetry anthology, chosen by a scholarly committee based on their poetic excellence and their role in revealing the Japanese national spirit and character. Text is in English only.

A collection of Japanese poems accompanied by their English translations.

The Manyoshu is the great literary work of eighth century Japan, a collection comprising work from more than four hundred writers. Its richness and nobility of sentiments have made the Manyoshu an object of literary fascination for centuries. Ten Thousand Leaves is a selection of love poems from this magnificent anthology,selected and translated by world renowned scholar Harold Wright and complemented by spectacular period art.

The Manyoshu, compiled during the late Nara period (the latter half of the eighth century), is both the oldest and the greatest of Japanese anthologies. ... This edition, containing 1,000 poems, is that of a committee of the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, which translated the poems into English, and had the advice of the English poet Ralph Hodgson ... Most often used by Manyo poets was the tanka, a five-line verse form still a favorite in Japan. ... --Columbia University PressDonated by Wendy Larsen, 8/2011.

The lyrical world of Chinese poetry in faithful translations by Kenneth Rexroth. The lyric poetry of Tu Fu ranks with the greatest in all world literature. Across the centuries—Tu Fu lived in the T'ang Dynasty (731-770)—his poems come through to us with an immediacy that is breathtaking in Kenneth Rexroth's English versions. They are as simple as they are profound, as delicate as they are beautiful. Thirty-five poems by Tu Fu make up the first part of this volume. The translator then moves on to the Sung Dynasty (10th-12th centuries) to give us a number of poets of that period, much of whose work was not previously available in English. Mei Yao Ch'en, Su Tung P'o, Lu Yu, Chu Hsi, Hsu Chao, and the poetesses Li Ch'iang Chao and Chu Shu Chen. There is a general introduction, biographical and explanatory notes on the poets and poems, and a bibliography of other translations of Chinese poetry.