Port Townsend translator turns love of Chinese poetry into life's work, way of life

By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter

	ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bill Porter, translator of Chinese poetry under the pen name Red Pine, in front of bamboo in the back yard of his Port Townsend home.
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It's a Zen version of the American Dream — or maybe Homer Simpson's.

"I like to find my own way," Porter said.

With this outlook in mind, and under the pen name Red Pine, Porter has become one of the foremost Chinese poetry and essay translators in the world.

He has captivated lovers of Chinese poetry, in particular, with his precise yet accessible translations of ancient texts written centuries ago by wanderers, exiles and monks. More than translations, Porter's books evoke a way of life that he has experienced firsthand as a Buddhist monk and recluse in Taiwan.

Benefit presentation Bill Porter, aka Red Pine, will give a presentation about Chinese poetry and the hermit tradition today, Seattle Asian Art Museum's Stimson Auditorium, at 7 p.m. Tickets to the event, a benefit for Copper Canyon Press, are $25. Call 1-877-501-1393.The museum is located in Volunteer Park, 1400 E. Prospect St., 206-654-3100.

Red Pine's latest project is the translation of "Poems of the Masters" (Copper Canyon Press, $18), an anthology of verse from the T'ang and Sung Dynasties, which ruled China from 960 to 1278 A.D. in the Golden Age of Chinese poetry.

The 224 short poems in the anthology — first published in China around the 13th century and used until the 1950s as a kind of poetry student's manual — represent a milestone in Porter's career. No one had ever translated the anthology to English in its entirety.

"In this, you could say he has discovered something and is forging a path," said Victor Mair, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Porter's willingness to tackle works others haven't approached, like the anthology, places him in a league of his own, Mair said.

Left and stayed

A 60-year-old Los Angeles native, Porter has been an avid student of Buddhism and the Chinese language since college.

	Figurines in a small planter in Bill Porter's kitchen. Porter dropped out of graduate school in the early 1970s to travel to Taiwan, where he joined a Buddhist monastery.

He dropped out of graduate school at Columbia University in the early 1970s and bought a one-way ticket to Taiwan, where he joined a monastery to feed his fascination with Buddhist spirituality.

"I was just following my nose, in a sense," Porter said. "I left and stayed for 20 years."

Porter meditated four hours a day and read classical Chinese texts for another eight. Reading and pondering literature, especially poems, is thought to be an essential part of Buddhist study and the poet/recluse has traditionally been among the most respected members of society.

After leaving the monastery, Porter spent 14 years in seclusion on a farm outside Taipei. He made no money and enjoyed no comforts of the developed world.

As he grew more fluent in Chinese, Porter started translating classical texts.

His experiences have given him a rare understanding. "When you have somebody that lives their work, I think that seeps through the lines," said Jim Harrison, a Montana novelist and the screenwriter behind the film "Legends of the Fall," who practices Buddhism. "There's an emotional credibility to the work."

"It's not like a professor with a grant," he said. "It's his life."

An extroverted recluse

Porter's quiet lifestyle in Port Townsend seems at odds with his gregarious personality. But in China, he says, being a recluse isn't the same as being antisocial.

	ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bill Porter, in his Buddhist monk's cap, peeks through a curtain in his home bearing a depiction of Bodhi Dharma, patriarch of zen.

With his mussed salt-and-pepper hair, shaggy beard, flannel shirt and comfy house slippers, Porter is at ease welcoming guests to his bamboo-shrouded house. He offers a hot cup of tea first thing. An Ichiro bobblehead, two TVs and an image of Kuan-Yin, the "Goddess of Mercy," make quirky sense in his sparsely decorated living room.

Who says monks can't be Mariners fans?

"He's a completely refreshing soul," said Porter's friend, the writer and fellow Buddhist Gretel Ehrlich, who lives on the Northern California coast.

When it's cold, Porter will don his knit, black monk's cap, a reminder of his Buddhist roots. His daily routine starts with an hour of meditation but ends with an episode of "The Simpsons."

In between, Porter usually takes walks along the beach, soaks in a hot bath, naps, relaxes with some tea and cooks dinner for his two kids, William, 21, and Iris, who turns 17 tomorrow. His wife spends much of her time with family in Taiwan.

Most of Porter's income comes from book royalties and fellowships that allow travel to China for research. But that's not enough to keep Porter out of poverty.

In the acknowledgements for "Poems of the Masters," he thanks the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Stamp Program and the Port Townsend Food Bank, among other agencies.

From the heart

In Chinese, the term for "poetry" — "shih" or "chih" — actually means "words from the heart," Porter explains. His translations and detailed footnotes about the authors have been described by critics as uncannily heartfelt.

"You just feel as if he's talking about the block down the street," Ehrlich said. "He has — and embodies — a real sense of the eccentricity of the poets and monks that he translates. There are no other translators around, in America at least, who have that experience. It adds such a depth to both the translations and the commentaries."

As research for the new anthology, Porter visited of the homesteads and gravesites of the poets, as well as the places where they wrote. Some of the most famous were former civil servants and political exiles who literally headed for the hills in search of solitude and a simpler life.

The site of the hut where poet and landscape artist Wang Wei lived more than 1,200 years ago was near a modern nuclear-weapons plant in a Chungnan Mountain valley, Porter said. Wary government soldiers arrested him and a photographer as he hiked toward the site in 1989. But after three days in prison and a small fine, he was allowed to continue work on the project.

Many of the poems in the anthology deal with being separated from home and loved ones, along with observations of nature and daily life. "They put you in a Chinese poet's shoes, at a poignant time in their lives," Porter said. "These poems represent very heartfelt feelings and moments."

Porter met more than 100 hermits in the 1980s while researching his travel book "Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits" (Mercury House, $14.95), which helped revive interest in that subculture. He says seclusion is a necessary rite of passage for any Buddhist master, akin to earning a Ph.D. in the West.

"They're there to gain the insights that will filter down the hills to the government, the leaders of society," Porter said.

Some hermits were in their 20s, while others were well past retirement age. It wouldn't be unusual to find a hermit with a college degree and professional background, or to find hermits who could barely read. The hermits' huts, sometimes caves, usually had dirt floors. Many relied on the kindness of neighbors for food, he said.

He'd chat with each hermit over tea and freshly made noodles for about an hour, discreetly leave $5 or $10 as a gift, then move on.

Dancing with words

Just as hermits will spend years dwelling on a favored text to root out new interpretations, Porter struggles to find a way to convey Chinese verse in meaningful, equally beautiful English.

One day on a bus in Taiwan, he came up with the pen name Red Pine. Doing away with a birth name, at least temporarily, diminishes the ego and frees up the mind.

"I use the name to sort of thank all of my muses," many of whom took names that referenced nature, he said.

Perhaps fortunately for Porter, Chinese is full of ambiguous and multi-layered expressions.

"It allows for great latitude in interpretation, and that allows for great insights to flourish," he said.

"I translate just like a ball player plays ball," Porter said. "I look at it as fun and a performance, and I feel physically involved with it when I do it. It's like dancing with words."

Porter's job, as he sees it, is not just translating each Chinese character but reading between the lines to capture mood and hidden sentiments.

The Chinese valued poetic turns of phrase the same way Americans value straight talk. Everyone wrote poetry.

"Like having a cup of tea, it was the perfect accompaniment to almost any occasion," Porter said.

But Porter's work bridges that cultural divide, creating English translations that still retain the poetic flourishes. Just don't call him a poet. Porter insists he's a translator alone.

"Even if Red Pine doesn't consider himself a poet, I do," countered Mair, the University of Pennsylvania professor.

He described Porter's book, "The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain," (Copper Canyon Press, $17) as "scintillating" and superior to other translations of the same poet because of its sensitivity.

"He's able to translate the feelings and emotions, basically the essence of the poem," Mair said.

Porter plans to return to China in April and is waiting to hear whether he's won a fellowship to collect and translate the poetry of living hermits there.

Last week, he finished his latest translation and essay — this one the 30-line "Heart Sutra," among the most well-known of all Buddhist sermons.

In it the Goddess of Mercy explains that everything is emptiness and emptiness is everything, that wholeness and unity come by removing divisions in the mind.

"There's no division between things — everything is one," Porter said.

The bamboo, the bobblehead, the Goddess of Mercy, the flannel button-ups — the contrasts in Porter's life all add up.

"He just continues on in an effortless way," Ehrlich said. "Unlike many translators and academics, he's actually ingested the message of the medium. He gets it."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com

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