Jade Mirror: Women Poets of China
EDITOR
Michael Farman
TRANSLATORS
Geoffrey Waters and Jeanne Larsen
This anthology spans twenty-five hundred years of writing by women. These are voices that were most often left out of the official anthologies and represent a hidden tradition that deserves a wider audience.
Reviews
"A delectable selection of poems by China's greatest women poets in translations of exquisite beauty. A rare achievement!"
—Red Pine
"Jade Mirror's particular strength comes from the fact that all of its fine translators bring to the work different senses of where poetry is to be found in the originals as well present some of the finest poetic translation of the last twenty years."
—Jerome Seaton
Michael Farmer is a translator of Chinese poetry and is a member of the American Literary Translators Association.
Jeanne Larsen fell in love with Chinese poetry when she was in high school. After earning her M.A. in creative writing, she spent two years teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and studying Mandarin. That not only locked in her love for Tang era poets and the world they lived in, it convinced her that, right Mom, she'd better go get a Ph.D. A few years of Comparative Literature later (Iowa City, USA, & Nagasaki, Japan, mostly), Jeanne started teaching at Hollins, between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny highlands, in Virginia's Roanoke valley.
She eventually went back to Taiwan for more language work. Summer seminars for college and university teachers helped her learn more about Chinese history and culture. Most recently, an intensive session at the Center for Hellenic Studies furthered her interest in Homer's ODYSSEY.
The late Geoffrey Waters was a translator of Chinese and Tibetan.