Yang Wan-li, one of the "four masters of Southern Sung poetry," has been largely unknown in the West. With this collection of translations by Jonathan Chaves, Yang's name should soon take its rightful place among those of the great poets of world literature.<BR>Yang's lifetime coincided with a period of Chinese history during which some of the greatest masterpieces of Chinese art and literature were created. Many of his poems are perfect verbalizations of the magnificent landscape paintings for which Sung painters have been acclaimed. Misty, ethereal, and luminous, both poetry and painting seem cast from the same aesthetic mold. But alongside the evocative descriptions of rivers, mountains and moonlit lakes, there are also solidly down-to-earth poems about the annoyance of overwork, feet that ache, and the pleasures of drinking one's fill of wine and sleeping till noon. Yang has been dubbed "the colloquial poet," and his poetry is full of humanity and a zest for living, expressed in direct, unadorned language.