Dear Neighbors,
David Hinton, the leading translator of Chinese wilderness poetry, a much-acclaimed poet himself, and an essayist, is coming to Marlboro College (cosponsored with the Vermont Insight Meditation Center) to give a lecture and reading on the morning of Saturday, November 3rd, and a poetry workshop that afternoon. I am writing because I think you might be interested.
As it says on his website: "David Hinton is a writer and translator who has produced a body of work exploring the weave of consciousness and landscape. This exploration is informed throughout by the insights of ancient Chinese culture; and it has primarily taken the form of translation, which he uses as a way to make contemporary poetry that operates outside the limitations of self-identity and the Western intellectual tradition" (https://www.davidhinton.net/profile).
David has published ten volumes of translations of Chinese poetry. He has also published translations of all the earliest works of Chinese philosophy. And he has published some remarkable books of his own poetry and essays. He lives in Calais, Vermont, and teaches in the translation program at Columbia University. And he has served as a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin. David is the recipient of the Thornton Wilder Prize (Lifetime Achievement) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as numerous Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, etc.
The morning lecture and reading, titled "Landscape Practice: The Original Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism Then and Now," will take place at 10:00 am in Ragle Hall in Marlboro's Serkin Center. David will discuss Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism, a refinement and formalization of Taoism—the native spiritual philosophy of China—infusing it with Buddhist practices that came from India. The Taoist/Ch'an worldview describes the Cosmos as a living and harmonious whole, constantly self-generating (and so, female in nature)—a whole of which humans are an integral part. David's talk will use breath as a way into that worldview, consider how those ideas shaped spiritual practice in ancient China, and how they shaped the arts. Throughout, there will be a focus on how remarkably contemporary that worldview feels in our secular and scientific age, and how it might shape our practice and daily lives today. (For more information, go to: https://www.marlboro.edu/news/story/5475/Landscape%20Practice%3A%20The%20Original%20Ch%27an%[...]Now) While the morning lecture and reading is free and open to the public, in the tradition of Vermont Insight (Theravāda Buddhism) we will be asking for a donation to support David's teaching.
The landscape tradition in Chinese poetry represents the earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history. It is shaped by the Taoist/Ch'an Buddhist philosophical system discussed in the morning session with David Hinton, wherein consciousness is woven into the tissue of the Cosmos. That philosophical system was taken up through translation in modern American poetry, where it provided the deep ideas driving the 20th-century avant-garde, a historical process David traces in his recent anthology The Wilds of Poetry. This workshop grows out of that book and will explore these two interrelated poetic traditions—the ideas and the poems. Participants will also experiment with creating their own poems based on the Ch'an and avant-garde poetics. The afternoon workshop will take place from 2:00 to 5:00 in the reading room at the Marlboro College library. For more information on the workshop, go to: https://www.marlboro.edu/news/story/5487/Landscape%20Poetry%20Workshop. To participate in the workshop, there is a $25.00 fee. If you are interested, please register here: https://vermontinsight.org/events/landscape-poetry-11-3-18-w-dh-mc/. If the workshop fills up—the registration website has places for 30 participants—David has offered to do another workshop in the evening.
Hoping you are able to join us,
William
Dec 26, 2024, 4 to 5:30 PM
Book, Board Game and Jigsaw Puzzle SwapDec 27, 2024, 2 to 5 PM
Off Trail Ramble Dec. 28Dec 28, 2024, 11 AM to 12 PM