Long River

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Translated from the Chinese by Ye Chun, Paul B. Roth, and Gillian Parrish. "Longtime factory-worker and Buddhist practitioner, Yang Jian is considered by Chinese poets and public alike to be one of China's most influential contemporary poets. This sustained recognition reflects his work's power in communicating the loss and confusion felt by many Chinese living through a time of breakneck change. With haunting, plain-spoken lines and resonant images, Yang Jian's poems skillfully combine simplicity and fullness--an aesthetic formed by a Taoist-Confucian commitment to balance as well as his Buddhist practices of awareness. This contemplative stance shapes a clear-eyed poetry with the depth of vision needed to articulate the personal suffering implicit in ideas of progress driving immense cultural and ecological devastations."--from the introduction by Gillian Parrish