The Rock’s Cold Breath: The Selected Poems of Li He

Li He is a Tang poet who set himself apart from the polite sensibility of his forebears...He was uncommon in his poetics, and both celebratory and morose in his many personae. His natural world is fecund with lotus, orchids, and islands ringed by willows. Whirlwinds breathe, alligators hum, dragons grieve, and the poet gallops recklessly on white mist. The sheer force and energy of his poems place Li He almost two millennia ahead of his time. He would have been a soul mate of Coleridge, or better yet, Baudelaire and Trakl." ~ From the translator's introduction

About the Translator: After earning her B.A. degree from the University of Colorado, Jodi Varon taught English in Taiwan. She earned her MFA degree from the University of Montana and her Ph.D. from Ohio University. Her translations of the correspondence of the John Day, Oregon Chinese herbal doctor Ing Hay and his business associate Lung On appear in Talking on Paper: Oregon Letters and Diaries. Her poems appear in numerous magazines and anthologies. Also a fiction and non-fiction writer, she has received the William Stafford Fellowship in Nonfiction from Oregon Literary Arts, Fishtrap Imnaha Writers Fellowships and an award in nonfiction from New Millenium Writing. She teaches English and Writing at Eastern Oregon University and is co-editor of the poetry magazine Basalt, formerly Calapooya.

Review: “A thousand years of long white days” by Doug Spangle. From The Asian Reporter, V15, #22 (May 31, 2005).