“In these lucid translations, Sze offers pleasures for all types of readers, those who want another taste of ancient favorites like Du Fu (“The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain”) and Li He (“I will cut off the dragon’s feet / and chew the dragon’s flesh”), those new to Chinese poetry (his candid account of one poem’s tortuous process remains the best introduction to the art of Chinese translation that I know of), and those who admire Sze’s own work for its telling specificities, as in Wen Yiduo (“I feed the fire cobwebs, rat droppings, and also the scaly skins of spotted snakes”), and its prismatic finesse, as in Xi Chuan (“The figures acquire the mountains / and waters, just as the mountains acquire the emerald and lapis”).”
— David Woo

“Arthur Sze’s concise anthology of translated and edited Chinese poetry The Silk Dragon II is a welcome volume to enter our own republic of letters at a fraught time of acerbic mutual misunderstanding in the political realm. Alexis de Tocqueville taught us about democracy. Perhaps the Tang Dynasty can teach us manners within the body politic, if only by instructing us in the art of reflection. This book is a balm to apply to the suppurating wound, self-inflicted and visited on others alike, of permanent discord, as we strive (some of us), impossibly it seems, for comity.”
— Johnny Payne