Song of Shadows

With delicacy and precision, the major Chinese poet Xiao Hai conjures shadows to explore philosophical questions of illusion and reality, history and time, art and language. Composed of several hundred interconnected poems, Xiao’s collection is, in his words, “a dynamic, creative, and open system of experience.” Deftly translated by Zhu Yu, Song of Shadows brings Wordsworth and Whitman into artful conversation with classical Chinese culture. Available as a bilingual eBook with text in Mandarin and English, this edition is a must-read for lovers of international literature, Chinese speakers learning English, and English speakers learning Mandarin. Known as a humble poet of discrete sensibilities, he has earned widespread recognition in his home country. His prizes include the Writer's Poetry Award and two Zi Jin Mountain Literature Awards, and he was the Tian Wen Poet of 2012. Beijing Literature included his poetry on their list of the best contemporary Chinese writing in 1998. His poetry has been translated into English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Romanian. He lives in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. About the Translator Zhu Yu is a lecturer in the English department at Capital Normal University, Beijing. She received her PhD in English literature from Peking University in 2010 and was a Fulbright visiting student in the English department of Yale University from 2007 to 2008. Her research interest includes British Romanticism and contemporary poetry. She has published essays on William Wordsworth and Seamus Heaney in many academic journals. She has translated into Chinese selected poems from Seamus Heaney's Human Chain (2013) and Seamus Heaney 2001-2010 (forthcoming).