Like Stephen Mitchell, acclaimed author and poet Ursula K. Le Guin has attempted a nonliteral, poetic rendition of the Tao Te Ching. She brings to it a punctuated grace that can only have been hammered out during long trials of wordsmithing. The wisdom that she finds in the Tao Te Ching is primal, and her spare, undulating phrases speak volumes. By making the text her own, Le Guin avoids such questions as "Is it accurate?" By making it her own, she has made it for us--a new, uncarved block from which we are free to sculpt our own meaning. [via]
