Glad you liked it! Just to be clear, though, I only offered feedback, ideas and editing during the writing process, and then published the finished article, but the text was written by John Renfroe!

Is that poetry in Classical Chinese? Seems like a very steep task indeed if one doesn’t know any Chinese at all!

I highly recommend “How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology” edited by Zong-qi Cai to anyone specifically interested in poetry. Each chapter is written by an academic who specializes in particular eras of Chinese poetry (the first chapter is about the 詩經/诗经 and it goes all the way to the Qing Dynasty). The book doesn’t teach Classical Chinese directly, but it goes through all the poetry mechanics, including Middle Chinese tones. It includes all poems in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English translation.

Zong-qi Cai’s new book, “How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology” was published just this month. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I’d expect it to have good in-depth commentaries of Classical/Literary Chinese prose passages.