This innovative textbook for learning Classical Chinese poetry goes beyond the traditional anthology of poems translated into English. It brings readers, including those without knowledge of Chinese, as close as possible to the structure of the poems in their original language. The first two chapters introduce the features of Classical Chinese important to poetry and then provide an overview of the formal and rhetorical conventions of classical poetry. The core chapters present the most important poets and poems of the Chinese poetic tradition, from the earliest times to the texts of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Each chapter begins with an overview of the historical context for the poetry of a particular period and offers a brief biography of each poet. Each poem is presented in the original Chinese with a word-for-word translation, followed by Fuller's straightforward translation and a more polished version by modern translators. A question-based study guide highlights the important issues in reading and comprehension of each specific text. Designed for classroom and self-study use, the textbook's aim is to help the reader appreciate both the distinctive voices of the major writers in the Chinese poetic tradition and the broad outlines of that tradition's development.