The Body, Shadow, and Spirit is a series of five-character-per-line poems. The first poem features the Body addressing the Shadow: while the physical forms of heaven, earth, mountains, and rivers endure forever, and grass and trees can regenerate even after withering, the human body is destined to die and vanish. Therefore, one should seize…
Tao Yuanming is remembered as the serene poet who “picked chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence.” But his famous resignation was far more than a gesture of moral integrity. In an age when Ji Kang was executed at forty, Ruan Ji was broken by forced collaboration, and Lu Ji’s entire clan was wiped out, official…