China's tradition of rivers-and-mountains poetry is the earliest and most extensive literary engagement with the idea of wilderness. David Hinton traces the tradition in his concise introductions to the nineteen poets featured here, who included virt...

Tu Fu (AD 712-770) is China's greatest classical poet. He radically altered the poetry of the High T'ang period; in addition to making formal innovations in language and structure, he extended the range of acceptable subject matter to include all asp...