Poems for Company – August 28th, 2023

Ancient Chinese Poetry: This show features the work of two poets.  Do they express concerns many of us think about in the 21st century?  Do they suggest how to adjust certain of our attitudes?  All the poems are from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, translated by Arthur Waley (Knopf, 1919).  (Many poems by these same authors may be found in a variety of translations.)  T’ao Ch’ien (362-427): “Returning to the Fields,” “Moving House,” “In the quiet of the morning I heard a knock at my door,” “Reading the Book of Hills and Seas.”  Po-Chu-I (772-846): “The Letter,” “Being Visited by a Friend During Illness,” “A Dream of Mountaineering.”  The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (Sweetgrassmusic.com).