The Wild Great Wall

Though often overlooked internationally, Zhu Zhu has nevertheless been producing one of the most interesting bodies of work in contemporary Chinese poetry. His elegy to Zhang Zao is near perfect as an embodiment of the deceased poet's lyricism, while in Florence, 'We study the map and forget / we are already in those pensively charming / streets and structures, roaming obliviously / through its newly recovered anonymity.' And translator Dong Li is a rare talent, a trilingual poet who translates exactingly into English from his native Chinese. In English as well as Chinese, these are poems of lush description, of wide-ranging reading across cultures and times, and of travel to the exterior and interior. -Lucas Klein, translator, and co-editor of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry 'Embers, when dark enough, can be used for mirrors.' The three decades of Zhu Zhu's poetry collected in The Wild Great Wall salvage a darkling mirrorwork from the remains of what's burned away. A resonant poet of desire, memory, and historical reflection, Zhu Zhu has found an apt translator in Dong Li, who understands that 'reunion happens in other people's books, / happens in translation, / happens in a foreign land.' The Wild Great Wall will introduce American readers to a singular poetic consciousness adrift in modernity like 'a floating bottle of morrow.' -Srikanth Reddy, author of Voyager and Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry