Little Mushroom: Intro Post

[x_los]

Danmei+ Reading Club and Dank Odes are back! We're starting "Little Mushroom" (小蘑菇) the week commencing April 10th. There's an associated Discord server (ask superborb for an invite), and we'll be running comment posts here.

We'll read three (English translation) chapters per week. This spreadsheet contains the schedule and concordances of the chapter endings across the Chinese and English versions. (Each English chapter encompasses 1-4 Chinese chapters.)

Participants are welcome to read in English, Chinese, or however suits them. Discussion in either language is also welcome.

If you'd like to see more poetry content on Dankodes, please drop me a comment.

Comments

[satbiym]

I would love to see more poetry content!

Also while I'm here, is there a specific book/primer/guide you'd recommend for a n00b trying to get more familiar with Chinese poetry in general?

In 2020, I read feyburner's "I hope you'll come and meet me" MDZS fic (what a good) and learned that the title is "from 'On Climbing Orchid Mountain in the Autumn to Zhang' by Tang dynasty poet Meng Haoran" and have been obsessed with that poem's translation since then. I like to imagine that that poem is the content sequel to the Soviet animated short-film Hedgehog in the Fog.

I wanted to learn more about chinese poetry since then but haven't known where to start from. So, more poetry content is a big yes from me.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, a fellow appreciator of verse! Not OP, but I really, REALLY loved "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei" (Weinberger and Paz) both for the beauty of the original piece as well as the insights and commentary into Chinese poetry translation, and it's a very digestible short read. If you want to sink your teeth into something a little more meaty, you can also take a look at "How to Read Chinese Poetry" (Cai), which is an anthology featuring 143 famous poems spanning a range of historical periods... and approximately 450 pages long due to all the commentary. If you check them out, I'd love to hear your opinion on whether they scratched your itch! Happy reading~

[x_los]

Yeah, I also think that kind of exegesis is a really key part of having a good experience. We went in very cold with the Book of Odes, and that was hard-going.

[x_los]

Okay, so here are two posts where we discussed some options. Do any of these appeal? I could run a poll with a couple of choices, if you wanna shortlist some.

https://dankodes.dreamwidth.org/16515.html , https://dankodes.dreamwidth.org/10325.html