Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

About Eliot Weinberger

Eliot Weinbergers books of literary essays include Karmic Traces An Elemental Thing The Ghosts of Birds and Angels & Saints. His political writings are collected in What I Heard About Iraq and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei he is a translator of the poetry of Bei Dao and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. He was formerly the general editor of the series Calligrams: Writings from and on China and the literary editor of the Murty Classical Library of India. Among his many translations of Latin American poetry and prose are The Poems of Octavio Paz Pazs In Light of India Vicente Huidobros Altazor Xavier Villaurrutias Nostalgia for Death and Jorge Luis Borges Seven Nights and Selected Non-Fictions. He has been publishing with New Directions since 1975. Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City. He wrote many volumes of poetry as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics literary and art criticism politics culture and Mexican history. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1977 the Cervantes Prize in 1981 and the Neustadt Prize in 1982. He received the German Peace Prize for his political work and finally the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.