THE ART OF WRITING: Lu Chi’s “Wen...

THE ART OF WRITING: Lu Chi’s “Wen Fu” translated by Sam Hamill (Milkweed Editions: $6.95). This celebrated manual on the art of composition was written late in the Third Century by a warrior-poet at the court of the last emperor of the Wu dynasty. Written in linked verse, it stresses a Confucian reverence for the classics and traditional standards of excellence: “The brilliant semiprecious stones of popular fashion/are as common as beans in the field./Though writers of my generation/produce in profusion,/all their real jewels cannot/fill the cup I make of my fingers.” Like Musashi’s “A Book of Five Rings,” “The Art of Writing” is structured around metaphors that retain their relevance: “However each sentence branches and spreads,/it grows from a well-placed phrase./ Restrain verbosity, establish order;/otherwise, further and further revision.”