Burying the Mountain, Paperback

In Shangyang Fang's debut Burying the Mountain, longing and loss rush through a portal of difficult beauty. Absence is translated into fire ants and snow, a boy's desire is transfigured into the indifference of mountains and rivers, and loneliness finds its place in the wounded openness of language. From the surface of a Song Dynasty ink-wash painting to a makeshift bedroom in Chengdu, these poems thread intimacy, eros, and grief. Evoking the music of ancient Chinese poetry, Fang alloys political erasure, exile, remembrance, and death into a single brushstroke on the silk scroll, where names are forgotten as paper boats on water.

About author(s):

Born in Chengdu, China, Shangyang Fang lives in Austin, Texas. Currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fang has won the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize. He writes poetry in English and Mandarin.