In addition to being a concise anthology of poems representing the breadth of Chinese poetry throughout its long history, Taken to Heart is window into the soul of the Chinese people. These poems are used as tools to educate students not only to literary history, but to cultural and historical imperatives; reading them is an invitation for the English-speaking reader to experience the high art and cultural legacy of a civilization that reaches back for millennia. These translations by award-winning poet Gary Young and Yanwen Xu, have appeared in over a dozen journals, and are now collected in a single volume.