Chinese Through Poetry: An introduction to the language and imagery of traditional verse.

I love this book as a textbook for Classical Chinese and traditional poetic expression. I think it is ideal for students who have at least one year of Chinese, or at least some experience in learning languages, and who are also very interested in literary expression. Previous comment "Not for Faint of Heart" is valid. A complete beginner CAN do well with this book, especially if they are fond of language learning or compelled to master poetic or linguistic analysis, but the casual learner may struggle in the grammar talk. The explanations are beautiful and precise and even direct, comprehensible and accessible, to me, but they are analytical and not quite conversational. (For those who want to dive straight into Chinese poetry without the analysis, I would recommend books such as Wai-lim Yip's which provide the Chinese poem, word-for-word glosses, ideas on translation and then you can use digital tools to look at particular characters/words.)What I really love about this book is the incremental approach. Barnes uses limited vocabulary lists with limited ranges of meaning, and exercises that reinforce these particular, focused applications. In the course I am now teaching, we have just finished Unit 9 in 12 course sessions and the students are growing in confidence and ability and Advanced and Novice students are equally engaged and interest (rare!).Most Classical Chinese texts introduce too much at once. For our small program, with "maintenance" courses in the upper level (half the usual expectation), most other Classical Ch. textbooks are discouraging and difficult. I have long thought that someone should develop a basic, incremental approach with ample practice combinations rather than full sentences taken from ancient texts. This is just that book!I learn something most days in this book, even though I have been a huge fan of Chinese poetry from the moment I could read a few characters, scrabbling through dictionaries and pestering friends for explanation to work them out. I am gaining a new, pragmatic sense of the way these poems work, including poems I memorized 30 years ago. Up till now they have been, perhaps, models of poetry rather than grammatical sentences. Barnes explains the difference (another beautiful feature), and allows me to read the surface or direct meaning of the poems. It feels as if I just got new glasses. I'm poring over my Chinese poetry books with new eyes.In between the excellent and succinct analysis, Barnes also converses openly and comfortably about larger issues in Chinese language and literature, such as the ambiguity of expression, the tendency to compress words, the need for the reader to "meet the [poet] halfway" and even discuss the continuum or "colour" of words and their ranges of meaning. I have tried to explain these kinds of larger issues to my students, but I am not as accurate as Barnes and, besides, he wrote his ideas down.Along the way to poetry, which Barnes acknowledges he does not reach -- this is a book of explaining direct expression -- this book is also immensely helpful for understanding Modern Chinese (ie. Mandarin). The structures are similar, if not the same, though the words and their length (bisyllabic rather than monosyllabic) are not the same. Enough said!

For years I have wanted to learn to read classical Chinese poetry. I have reading ability with literary chinese prose, but I have always regretted not taking a course on Chinese poetry in grad school. Over the years, I have tried a number of different books, such as Zongqi Cai's _How to Read Chinese Poetry_, Hawkes _Little Primer of Tu Fu_, etc. without much success.I picked this up on a whim, and for the last month or so, I have worked my way through about two thirds of it, a chapter every night or two. It has drawn me inside of Chinese poetry in a way that I have never been before. It has a number of things going for it (1) Barnes chose interesting poems, even early on, with sufficient literary value to repay close study. (2) His explanations of grammar are good., though perhaps more detailed than is entirely necessary (3) he is a sympathetic reader of poems, and encourages students to have mindset of 'meeting the poet half-way' (4) The book is well organized focusing on poems with common themes to help build vocabulary. (5) in a gentle and informal way, the author introduces a lot symbolism, mythology, etc.A very good book for someone with some familiarity with Chinese. I can't speak for how well it would work for someone with no Chinese, but it would be worth a try.

This book requires no previous knowledge of Chinese (classical or modern). It explains key concepts of traditional Chinese poetry including omission of pronouns and how each line typically has its first immediate constituent split between the second and third character (in five-character verse), or fourth and fifth character (in seven-character verse).The translations into English are also very clear, almost literal, which makes them very easy to learn from. The book starts off very simply before progressing on to more complicated material. Everything is very well explained.

I've finished Unit 4 in the book so far and give it high marks, particularly for the key to the exercises and each answer shows the very wide range of possibilities. The author teaches you a multitude of ways to translate lines of Chinese poetry to get a meaning that makes sense. I'm truly amazed at his versatility in rendering Chinese into English and how he teaches you how to as he puts it "meet the poet half way". I haven't gotten to translating actual original poetry yet (it's still made up examples), but I like the approach as a lot of other textbooks have very literalistic translations and don't give nearly enough examples. By the time you finish a chapter you can probably think of at least five ways to translate a given phrase as each chapter of this book has nearly fifty questions. Definite recommendation. The author certainly has a gift for teaching poetry and in particular Classical Chinese poetry.

I studied a couple of years of Classical Chinese back in college - with Shadick's venerable textbook. But I'd always regretted not getting to the level to be able to read the great poets of the Tang.Most Classical Chinese texts focus on the great philosophers of the pre-Han, and that's certainly well worth reading. But the language of poetry is, of course, different, and even more terse and image based. Archie Barnes does a masterful job of explaining the peculiarities of the language of poetry, and includes carefully graded exercises, and an exercise key - invaluable to the independent learner.Now, he can't make Classical Chinese easy - it's certainly challenging. But I can think of no better guide to begin to unlock the treasures of China's poetic heritage.Also, for students of both classical and modern Chinese, I can't recommend Skritter too highly. I can't include the link, but a google search will bring it up. Simply the best tool to learn Chinese / Japanese characters out there.

I have enjoyed this book so much that I am reluctant to complete its final exercises; I will feel very sad on finishing it, like saying goodbye to a special friend. What a superb legacy by this Chinese specialist who apparently did not publish much at all in his lifetime. His gentle but meticulous introduction to Classical Chinese through early Chinese poetry has suited me perfectly, as my initial interest in learning the language stemmed from a love of Tang poetry in particular. The selection of poems used for study is mainly from the Tang and Song dynasties. Along the way, Archie Barnes' many thoughtful comments show his insight, culture and sensitivity. One feels one gets to know him quite well as one progresses through the various exercises. Although I found the rapid increase in vocabulary rather challenging as the book progressed, the pinyin character index proved to be a very useful resource, and a bit later (as my confidence grew) I was able to explore the composition of individual characters using Barnes' careful referencing of their connection to different "radicals" ( for this I turned to Wieger's meticulous book on the origin of Chinese characters). Barnes also does a good job in explaining the peculiar and variable grammar of Classical Chinese poetry. I was reassured by his comment that: "One of the potential benefits of studying the language of Chinese classical verse is to make us vividly aware of how little we actually rely, or need to rely, on grammar for understanding language" (!). Simply by learning (some) of the book's vocabulary, and grasping some basic grammatical rules used by the poets, I was inducted into a new depth of relationship with ancient Chinese culture. Thank you to all those who helped to bring this very special book into print.

This book is a wonderful introduction to Chinese classical writing and poetry. I am already reasonably fluent in mandarin (simplified characters), but found this explanation of classical grammar in the form of poetry very interesting and useful, in that it allowed me to understand more clearly how to construct Tang style poems. The translation of Tang poetry is an art form, different books give a different understanding, and classical poetry is completely different from modern prose. So I am very happy to have this book as a source of reference and inspiration.

This is a fantastic book for anyone who wants to learn Classical Chinese. The book assumes no knowledge at all of Chinese, and guides you gently through enough grammar and vocabulary to be able to read example phrases. It is very suitable for self-study, as it gives you the opportunity to test your understanding by translating phrases and poems yourself before looking up the answers in the back of the book.And of course there are the poems themselves, classics of the Tang Dynasty, the unsurpassed high point of Chinese culture. It is very satisfying to begin to be able to understand them in their native language rather than always reading them in translation.Of course, there is no perfect book out there for every student. For example, I thought Chapter 16 quite heavy going compared to the previous ones because the jump in the number of new characters. Also at times I found some of the grammatical explanations a little heavy going, however on advancing further in the book I’d referring back to them, and came to applicate them.This is one of those books which is clearly a labour of love by the author, someone with a deep knowledge and appreciation of his subject and with the passion and ability to transmit that knowledge to others in the written form. Having purchased other books on learning Classical Chinese (both prose and poetry) I’d suggest that anyone interested in the subject starts with this one.

Really great book. I'm almost finished working through it now - I didn't even think I was that interested in learning middle Chinese but stumbled across this book and am, yeah, as somebody who didn't know any chinese when I jumped into it, it's great. I've learned so many lovely things in the past couple of months with the book :)(edit: finished it. amazing).

Ich habe Hochchinesisch mehrere Jahre mit "normalen" Lehrbüchern gelernt. Als Belohnung habe ich mir jetzt dieses Buch zu klassischem Chinesisch gegönnt. Der Autor erklärt einige etymologische Hintergründe zu den Schriftzeichen, die ich bisher nicht kannte. Bei der Interpretation der extrem vage formulierten Gedichte wird dann aber auch die andere Gehirnhälfte gefordert. Auch der historische Hintergrund zu einigen Gedichten wird sehr grob erklärt, aber hier muss ich wahrscheinlich parallel etwas Wikipedia wälzen, um die Anfänge der chinesischen Gesellschaft zu verstehen.