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Tao: the poem: Lao Tzu?s Tao Te Ching concentrated as a lyric series
Tao the poem Lao Tzus Tao Te Ching concentrated as a lyric series Author:Son Rivers, Laozi, Lao Tzu In the summer of 2009 I started transcreating the Tao Te Ching, reading different translations (Ellen M. Chen, David Hinton, Stephen Mitchell, Red Pine and several others), pondering each word of each verse as translated in a word-by-word grid created by Jonathan Star, and abridging each and every verse into a 140 character tweet. I ended up pub... more »lishing it in book form as Tao Te Tweet. I am now transforming the transcreations into short sections of a long poem as a new project, making minor revisions along the way, and no longer holding to the 140 character limit, although not necessarily adding or subtracting or revising either, except in the lineation added to the original. I am trying to stay true to the initial transcreation, which attempted to stay true to the original as viewed through translations?this is not a project revisiting those translations or that amazing grid, for that was an extensive project in and of itself. In re-forming, not only did I see the subject matter as Tao, but I more closely saw the importance of Te. And although I titled the book, Tao: the poem, I needed to add a further sub-title: Meditations on the Great Principle and its Sage. For this is the import of Te. It is the one who manifests Tao, which is the Great Principle without name.« less