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August 7, 2021

The River Village

Tu Fu

^{Translated by Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell}

The river makes a bend and encircles the village with its current.
All the long Summer, the affairs and occupations of the river village are quiet and simple.
The swallows who nest in the beams go and come as they please.
The gulls in the middle of the river enjoy one another, they crowd together and touch one another.
My old wife paints a chess-board on paper.
My little sons hammer needles to make fish-hooks.
I have many illnesses, therefore my only necessities are medicines.
Besides these, what more can so humble a man as I ask?

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The River Village” appeared in Fir-Flower Tablets (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921).

Tu Fu, also called Du Fu, was a major Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. He was born around the year 712 in Gongxian, China. During Tu Fu’s lifetime, the political climate of his region was especially volatile. As a result, he moved often, and his work was influenced both by history and his personal travels and hardships. Perhaps best known for his mastery of the “lüshi,” or “regulated verse,” Tu Fu died in 770.

Florence Ayscough was born on January 21, 1875, in Shanghai, China. A sinologist, editor, writer, and translator of Chinese literature, she published her first book Fir-Flower Tablets (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), a book of translations of Chinese poems, with Amy Lowell. The author of many books, and lecturer on Chinese art and literature, as well as librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai, she died on April 24, 1942.

Amy Lowell was born on February 9, 1874, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Lowell campaigned for the success of Imagist poetry in America and embraced its principles in her own work. Her books include What’s O’Clock (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A dedicated poet, publicity agent, collector, critic, and lecturer, Lowell died on May 12, 1925.

Fir-Flower Tablets
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921)

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Thanks to Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water (Milkweed Editions, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Watch a Q&A about Ali’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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"The River Village" by Tu Fu, translated by Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell

The River Village

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