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Marybeth Kurnat, composer · Truth Among The Flowers

The Tang Dynasty is considered the “golden age of Chinese poetry,” and it was an important part of life for all social classes during this period. A common theme in Tang poetry is pilgrimage, and the Chinese phrase for this translates to “paying one’s respect to a mountain.” The spiritual journey of the pilgrimage is always far more important than the destination. Liu Changqing, a voice of the Middle Tang period, helped develop Landscape Style poetry (山水诗), which makes a focal point of the landscape itself, rather than a human presence there. To me, this poem is about finding beauty and meaning in the world outside of oneself. Written language in the Far East, unlike the West, is based on characters that represent ideas rather than individual words, and can be translated or interpreted into Western languages in a number of different ways. I found this translation on display at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

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