In Love with the Way：Chinese Poems of the Tang Dynasty (The Calligrapher's Notebooks)

ThepoetryselectedforthisvolumecomesfromtheTangDynasty(618—907),anerawhentheinfluenceofBuddhismwasatitsstrongestinChina.ThebestlovedandmostinfluentialofallChinesepoemscomefromthisperiod.LikeallbooksintheShambhalaCalligraphyseries,InLovewiththeWaytakesaclassicspiritualtextthathasbeenasubjectforcalligraphersformanyyears–andusesittoshowcaseauniquelymodernexampleofthecalligrapher’sart,bringingthetexttolifeinastrikingnewway.InLovewiththeWayisaccompaniedbyFrançoisCheng’sintroductoryessayonpoetryoftheTangperiod,andbyaclosingessayontheworkofthecalligrapher,FabienneVerdier.Calligraphy(fromtheGreekfor“beautifulwriting”)isanartwherewordandimagemeet,wheretheartiststrivestogivevisualexpressiontothemeaningofwordsinawaythattranscendsthetextwhileremainingcompletelyfaithfultoit.Itisadisciplinethathasbeeninvestedwithspiritualsignificancewhereverithasarisen–andithasarisenthroughouttheworldineveryage,invirtuallyeverylanguage,culture,andreligion.TheShambhalaCalligraphyseriesisacollectionofbooksdevotedtocontemporaryexpressionsofthis“artoftheword,”featuringcontemporarycalligraphers’strikingnewinterpretationsoftextsthathavebeentraditionalsubjectsforcalligraphicinterpretation.WhetherinArabic,Greek,Hebrew,Latin,orChinesepictographs,thecharacters,words,andsentencesarebroughttolifeanewhereinachoreographyofmind,hand,andheartbywhichletterandspiritfuseinasinglestroke.