HUNDRED TONGUES

From Earnshaw Books in 2025, a 2-volume series : Hundred Tongues, Volume One: Northern Song Poets, and What the Cuckoo Said, Volume Two: Southern Song Poets. 百舌 bai she, i.e., hundred tongues, is what the bull-headed shrike and other songbirds are sometimes called in Chinese. I am borrowing the name for my poets. "What the Cuckoo Said" is 不如歸去 bu ru gui qu, meaning, "might as well go home!"

Volume 1: Hundred Tongues,

Northern Song Poets

The two volumes of poets from Song China each begins with a poet who has been called “the best of ci-lyricists”, Li Yu 李煜and Li Qingzhao李清照, one a warlord, the other, a woman. The ci 詞came into full maturity in the Song dynasty and as a poetic genre is generally associated with the period. Li Yu, who died a Song captive, is strictly speaking pre-Song, but it is hard to find a ci-lyricist writing after him whose poetry has not been influenced by his in some way. After Li Yu, all the poets in Volume One are from the first part of the Song dynasty called Northern Song. We begin with a pair of opposites, Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹, a “serious” Confucian scholar-warrior, and Liu Yong 柳永, a popular ci-lyricist who the Confucian literati considered “vulgar.” Then we move onto Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣and Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修, half a generation after Fan and Liu, also very different in style but are both admirers of the patriotic Fan Zhongyan and became good friends. Next, we come to Su Shi 蘇軾, who was, together with his brother, “discovered” by Ouyang Xiu. Su Shi is the acknowledged master of the so-called豪放派 hao fang pai, heroic and unrestrained style of ci-lyricists. He is followed by Qin Guan 秦觀who is considered one of the Four Scholars of the Su family (蘇門四學士之一) and called Su Shi his teacher, although he wrote in a very different style which is called “delicate and elusive” 婉約派 wan yue pai. Qin Guan concludes this selection of Northern Song poets. To help you more fully appreciate the rich tapestry of Song poetry, and why the period is divided into Northern and Southern Song, “A Short, Short History of Song China,” is provided after the Li Yu chapter.

coming in October:

What the Cuckoo Said

Volume 2: Southern Song Poets

As with Volume One, we begin with a poet who lived through a great upheaval. Li Yu 李煜, the Last Monarch of Southern Tang, who is the first poet in the last volume, saw the end of his kingdom and was captured by the Song Emperor and put under house arrest until he was given the “gift of poison” on his birthday. Li Qingzhao 李清照 (not of the same Li family) saw the end of the first half of the Song dynasty, or Northern Song, and had to run for her life. Both poets are best known for their ci-lyrics, and to posterity, they vie for the position of being the “best” of the genre. I leave that judgement to others. Except for Li Qingzhao with whom we begin this volume, all the poets in What the Cuckoo Said were born after the Jin Dynasty was established by the Jurchens in the north, and the Song court had moved to the Southern Song capital in Hangzhou.

Li Qingzhao, a woman, is the only poet here who experienced the chaos of the Jurchen invasion, although all these Southern Song poets suffered the humiliation of losing almost half their country to foreign rule. Chronologically speaking, she is both a Northern as well as Southern Song. After her, this selection of Southern Song poets begins again with the legendary hero, Yue Fei 岳飛and a ci-lyric, “Blood Red the Raging River” attributed to him, both casting long shadows on the Chinese imagination to this very day. Just recently, a movie based on his story was released to tremendous acclaim and popularity in China. Then comes Lu You 陸游, a patriotic poet with two surprising passions, his life-long love of his first wife in a short marriage ended by his mother, and his love of cats. His contemporaries, Fan Chengda 范成大and Yang Wanli 楊萬里, whose verses almost mirror each other, come next. After them, we move onto Zhu Shuzen 朱淑貞, another woman poet, but whose work was undervalued because of her reputation as a fallen woman; her own parents were so ashamed of her that they burned her poetry. We conclude this volume with a frustrated warrior, Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, who became what posterity calls the Dragon of the ci-lyric. He was passionate, tender, philosophical, imaginative, and humorous.

From a Recent Review of HUNDRED TONGUES in Goodreads by Author Heena Rathore Rathore-Pardeshi

. . . What impressed me most is author Dolling’s balance between scholarship and accessibility. The book explains the difference between shi and ci, the intricacies of tune-patterns, and the cultural symbols woven into the lyrics (from wutong trees to migrating geese) but never in a way that alienates a newcomer. Instead, she offers these notes conversationally, as if guiding the reader through a gallery of poems, pointing out details they might have otherwise missed. This makes the translations not only comprehensible but deeply enjoyable, carrying both the music of the originals and the intimacy of personal reflection. . . .

. . . On the whole, Hundred Tongues succeeds in what so many poetry collections fail to do, it makes the poems feel urgent and present rather than relics of a distant age. For readers familiar with Tang poetry who wonder what came after, or for anyone curious about the depth and subtlety of Chinese lyric, this book is an illuminating, thoughtful, and highly readable introduction. It is a project that feels both scholarly and personal, and that combination makes it linger. It's a beautiful entry point into Song Dynasty poetry, with translations that are clear, evocative, and anchored by commentary that both informs and invites.

INTERVIEW with author SUSAN WAN DOLLING about her Song poetry series is now available in CHINESE LITERATURE PODCAST by LEE MOORE on YouTube

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