Forms of Distance: Poems By Bei Dao

Dao, Bei (Author); Hinton, David (Translator)

ISBN 10: 0811212661 / ISBN 13: 9780811212663

Published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, 1994

About this Item

Mandarin Chinese and English language hardcover signed by the author, with unclipped dust jacket, in very good condition. Jacket is lightly sunned, edges are a little creased, and board spine ends are slightly bumped. Binding is sound and pages are clear. LW.

Seller Inventory # 545900

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Forms of Distance: Poems By Bei Dao
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811212661
• ISBN 13: 9780811212663
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author
• Book Type: Used
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

An exile in the West since the events of Tiananmen Square, Bei Dao is widely considered China's most distinguished poet. In this new collection, he goes beyond the poetry of exile and reaches a new level of maturity and synthesis in a series of kaleidoscopic images of the end of the twentieth century. These poems, a conflation of history and personal happenstance, are explorations of individual, emotional, physical, and cultural distance that speak to an international readership in an ever more divided world. Bei Dao's poems are translated with new sharpness and intensity by David Hinton, highly regarded for his versions of the chinese classics (The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien), who comments in his Translator's Note: "Bei Dao's work recalls China's ancient masters: clear resonant images set in sharp juxtapositions. But his are decidedly modern clarities, adrift on the terrible mystery of today's world-historical forces."

About the Authors

Bei Dao, (the pen name of Zhao Zhenkai) was born in Beijing in 1949. During the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a concrete mixer and blacksmith for eleven years. Forced into exile after the Tiananmen Massacre, he lived in Europe and the US until 2007, then settling in Hong Kong until, only recently, moving back to Beijing. He has been hailed as "the soul of post-Mao poetry" (Yunte Huang) and praised for his "intense lyricism" (Pankaj Mishra). Bei Dao has received numerous awards for his poetry all over the world, and founded the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong. His photography and paintings have been exhibited in China, Hong Kong, and Japan. New Directions publishes ten of his books.

DAVID HINTON's original Selected Poems of Tu Fu was the first full-length verse translation of Tu Fu published in America. The author also of singular books of essays and poetry, Hinton has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous N.E.A. and N.E.H fellowships, both major awards given for poetry translation in the United States, and a lifetime achievement award by The American Academy of Arts and Letters.