Danmei Society for the Egregious Misuse of Chinese Poetry and Literature

What Next III: Back to the Nextening

2021-11-26T19:48:15Z

Posted by: x_los

For our upcoming project, we're considering one of the open source titles from De Gruyter's Library of Chinese Humanities. They're free to access, have significant introductions and substantial footnotes, and are bilingual.

- The Works of Li Qingzhao: China's Foremost Woman Poet: This Song poet's surviving oeuvre is about 200 pages, or 89 pieces. It might take us about 18 weeks.

- Cao Zhi: I heard the Caos were really pivotal but I didn't have a good text to attach to that before now. Cao Zhi is offering us such hits as, 'Numinous Mushroom Song'.

- "Ruan Ji is usually mentioned first among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The other sages [included] Xi Kang[,] his lover". This couple has a combo volume: cute.

- There's a big fat Du Fu, if anyone wants more Du Fu.

- Coming soon, THAT CRAZY BITCH LI HE (the one that got kicked out of the 300 for being too Weird). "His poems famously explored ghostly, supernatural and fantastic themes." I do think he's rather esoteric, and might be best saved for later.

Still later, we did want to hit the Chu Ci. There's a decent looking recent edition, but also a Hawkes Chu Ci. (We could potentially do either, or both at once.)

I'd like us to start the new title Monday, so if you have preferences you haven't told me about elsewhere regarding these titles, the once we've floated in earlier posts or something entirely fresh, this is your chance to say something.

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NEXT UP: Nineteen Old Poems

2021-07-06T12:57:25Z

Posted by: x_los

After some discussion, we're going to reconvene to discuss the first batch of the 'Nineteen Old Poems' the week of August 18th.

After that, we'll do 'Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute'. That'll last us a month, at which point we'll have a quick chat about what's next.

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Next Up: Poll Time!

2021-07-03T15:30:54Z

Posted by: superborb

Please refer back to this post for information about the choices.

View Poll: Next Up: Poll Time!

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Next Up: You Decide

2021-06-03T22:07:19Z

Posted by: x_los

With only four more weeks of Shi Jing left, it's time to to start thinking about what comes next.

I'm going to outline some options and their pros and cons, and in the comments you can argue in favour of any of these, or make a case for something I've not thought about. Then I'll do a tick-box poll where you can express a preference for multiple choices.

All readings will be provided free, and will be bilingual.

In chronological order:

- Chu Ci: Heavy on shamanism, beasts, other supernatural beings and myths. It's less tidy and official than the Shi Jing, and looks to be an interesting read for anyone keen on xianxia. There is a heavily glossed, recentish and impressively fluid translation. But while later than the Shi Jing, it is another early collection. People seem to want a break from that period, so it might be best left until later on. This looks like it might take us roughly 17 weeks.

- Nineteen Old Poems: A Han era collection that would take us about two weeks, which has many decent translations available. This pulls us from the Shi Jing into later work, and gives us that nice 'only took two weeks!' feeling of accomplishment before we begin any longer project. It is still 'earlyish', though, which might be a point against it.

- New Songs from the Jade Terrace: Romantic and a bit sexy, at nearly 700 poems, to me, this collection seems a bit long for us at present.

(Wen Xuan is not in the running: too long.)

- Three Hundred Tang Poems: This multi-author collection features the greatest hits from an era generally considered the apex of the Chinese poetic tradition. (Though a few conservative calls were involved in this 'best of' reckoning, leaving Li He, the Devilish Talent, out completely.) My concern would be that it is, very deliberately, exactly as long as the Shi Jing, which might put people off. This would take about 30 weeks.

A nice, free 'complete works of Wang Wei' translation recently came out. There's also his famous co-authored compilation, Wangchuan ji. I feel both might be better left until we've decided whether we want to go forward with Wang Wei in particular. We're not even discussing Quan Tangshi, it's too long.

douqi expressed some interest in Yuan poetry or Song work, which includes poets like "Ouyang Xiu (kind of), Liu Yong, Su Shi, Li Qingzhao (the Genius Smurfette of the lot), Qin Guan, either Zhou Bangyan or Jiang Kui, maybe the Yan father-son duo, and the soldier guys: Fan Zhongyan, Xin Qiji and that one cannibalistic Yue Fei poem". Qing poetess Gan Lirou also sounds pretty hot. We'd need to hopefully identify a particular collection, though, so I'm not just sourcing random poems in my area of no-expertise.

Comments and suggestions welcome! I'm especially interested in classic collections like the Three Hundred Tang Poems, which have their own historical presence (which increases the chances that someone's written some interesting nonfiction about them).

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Monday, Monday, Monday

2020-11-18T20:51:04Z

Posted by: x_los

Hello all!

I'd like to put out the new set of poems this coming Monday. It'll be another light week, with one 'book'/chapter. I'm hoping Current Events' having slackened a little will give us some time for this?

Please let me know if anything (a date change, dropping down to fewer poems, etc) will make participation more convenient for you, or what format elements aren't working for you. It'd be really good to see some more engagement with the three books that are up, so we can get some momentum going/in the habit of this. You REALLY DO NOT have to feel intimidated commenting--seriously, any impressions are of interest!

In the meantime, here's a post by one of our members on some cool relevant nonfiction, which I'm going to add to the reference post.

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Week's Delay

2020-11-01T21:18:09Z

Posted by: x_los

Hey everyone,

It's been a really weird week, with the US election looming and UK re-entering a major lockdown. Let's give these batches another week? I'm going to solicit participation/chase people up via email.

I'm going to make the posts public-viewable as well. IF YOU HAVE PRIVACY CONCERNS, please state your preferred solution (commenter screening, burner account or what have you) in the initial discussion post. We'll then implement that for any relevant comments/in time for next Monday's post, if it's a post-wide applicable solution.

Thanks!

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General Resources and Reading Suggestions

2020-10-19T05:04:07Z

Posted by: x_los

This is a post to drop titles of and links to relevant reading material, be it nonfiction, poetry we might want to collectively hit up in future or read on our own time, or fiction (including trying to hustle up fresh blood for your latest reading/watching obsessions, and information as to where one can find such titles).

We'll talk about poetry and nonfiction as a group before adding it to the Great Plan.

This post will be made public once the privacy discussion is resolved.

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T&Cs

2020-10-18T14:25:18Z

Posted by: x_los

Just reiterating the substance of the charter letter here, in case that's more convenient for people than referring back to the link. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT WITH ANY RELATED FEEDBACK.

( Charter Letter )

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Survey Results

2020-10-18T13:43:12Z

Posted by: x_los

Thank you everyone who filled out the survey. These were the results:

Especially Comfortable:
Dreamwidth x 8
Discord x 7
Reddit x 5
Email x 2
Slack
LJ

Hard No:
Twitter x 6
Reddit
Livejournal
Slack

I didn't participate because objectivity, or something.

Because the results were so close, let's commit to a review period after we've finished the first poetry collection to see if we'd prefer to move to Discord or are happy here. That sound ok?

FYI, there were about 10 respondees, and say another 4+ who I think may well get 'round to it.

Before I set up the com, what are people's privacy preferences?

- Fully Open Plus: posts not locked, and can tell people to check out stuff on the com where relevant (anyone who wants privacy welcome to join the group via a burner account)
- Fully Open: discoverable, but not really shared around (anyone who wants privacy welcome to join the group via a burner account)
- Compromise Formation: "discussions happen in private but question/poem is in public and maybe an anonymised summary"/private posts and public weekly round ups (This was suggested by a member. Pros: privacy, cons: the work of making the round-up post.)
- Fully Private: Fight Club mode.

Please comment with any thoughts/preferences.

INCIDENTALLY, this does not have to be the Com Name. It is literally just the first thing I thought of, which is no basis for a system of government, and indeed hardly even a good way of deciding what I should have for lunch.

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