Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1919 — Ancient Chinese Poetry as "Written Pictures” [ARTICLE]

Ancient Chinese Poetry as "Written Pictures”

Several translations of sixteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century Chinese poems,, which have Just been printed in an American magazine of verse, will strike many casual.readers as being very much like occidental vers llbre; and it is Also noticeable, that these poems, widely apart in time, are very near together in feeling and technical manner. The Chinese poet, in fact, seems to have anticipated by several centuries the "latest thing” in Western verse expression. And perhaps this is really the case, The Chinese term for such poems is, literally translated, “written pictures,” which will also seem to many modern readers a good working definition for vers llbre.—Christian Science Monitor.