Catching the edge of your shirt
- Poetry of Meng Jiao

《欲别牵郎衣》

- Last updated: 2024-03-16 15:44:46

Catching the edge of your shirt by Meng Jiao
中文原文

欲别牵郎衣,郎今到何处。

不恨归来迟,莫向临邛去。


English Translation

Catching the edge of your shirt,

"Where are you going to this time?"

I don't worry you come back after you promised,

i just wish you won't go to Linqiong.

Meng Jiao:孟郊(AD751-814),he's a studious poet who paid a lot of time to learn how to write poems.Most of his poems are very natural and simple.He hardly wrote the love poems,so his love poems look like the folk with the smell of the village.

Why Chinese poems is so special?
The most distinctive features of Chinese poetry are: concision- many poems are only four lines, and few are much longer than eight; ambiguity- number, tense and parts of speech are often undetermined, creating particularly rich interpretative possibilities; and structure- most poems follow quite strict formal patterns which have beauty in themselves as well as highlighting meaningful contrasts.
How to read a Chinese poem?
Like an English poem, but more so. Everything is there for a reason, so try to find that reason. Think about all the possible connotations, and be aware of the different possibilities of number and tense. Look for contrasts: within lines, between the lines of each couplet and between successive couplets. Above all, don't worry about what the poet meant- find your meaning.

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