Download or read book Selected Poems of Du Fu written by and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Du Fu (712–777) has been called China's greatest poet, and some call him the greatest nonepic, nondramatic poet whose writings survive in any language. Du Fu excelled in a great variety of poetic forms, showing a richness of language ranging from elegant to colloquial, from allusive to direct. His impressive breadth of subject matter includes intimate personal detail as well as a great deal of historical information—which earned him the epithet "poet-historian." Some 1,400 of Du Fu's poems survive today, his fame resting on about one hundred that have been widely admired over the centuries. Preeminent translator Burton Watson has selected 127 poems, including those for which Du Fu is best remembered and lesser-known works.