Welcome to Litsy!

This posthumous collection is a detailed, retrospective look at one of the more brilliant poetic minds of the twenty-first century, and includes an introduction by Bai Hua and afterword by Bei Dao. A dark humor vivifies Zhang Zao's later work as he eroticizes the harrowing: doubt, finality, and then nothingness. The choice of these poems is retrospective: "Mirror," one of his earliest and best known works starts the collection, while "Lantern Town" was written less than two months before his death. Elegy a letter opens and someone says it's getting cold another letter opens it is empty, empty yet heavier than the world a letter opens someone says he is singing from a mountain height someone says no, even if the potato was dead the inertia alive in it would still grow tiny hands another letter opens you sleep like a tangerine but after peeling off your nudity someone says he has touched another you another letter opens they are all laughing everything around explodes into laughter a letter opens clouds and water run wild outside a letter opens I am chewing a certain darkness another letter opens high moon in the sky another letter opens and shouts death is something real Translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain co-edited the Manoa anthologies, Sky Lanterns (2012) and On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State (2013), and is the translator of three previous Jintian titles, including Lan Lan's Canyon in the Body and Wind Says by Bai Hua.