My blurb:
Yang Jian composes a poetry of slow erosion and quick frosts, of liminal moments that course through and undermine our human-made world’s crude fabrications, clearing the mind for just as long as necessary before its return. “I need to be more sincere in pain,” he writes, and “I’m fortunate to be born in a country where sincerity inspires.” In a land where “Chimneys erupt out of the wheat field” and “At the foot of the mountain that has been blasted open, / there’s a chunk of old willow, like the corpse of a dragon, / surrounded by scorched grasses” he asks: “Since the land is a dream, / why look back, why sorrow?” Elsewhere, he reminds us: “There are hundreds of sealed ancestral temples in your body but you simply ignore them.” So: pay attention. If ever “You seem to be living a nightmare,” take note: “Wherever leaves fall, / there is light — “
— David Perry
More about the book at Tinfish Press (including order link)