The August Sleepwalker: Poetry

Download Bonnie S. McDougall, an expert on modern Chinese literature and history, was one of the first Western scholars to see the brilliance of Bei Dao …. Now the two volumes [The August Sleepwalker and Waves]… allow people who do not read Chinese to gauge the full range of Bei Dao’s work, and also to appreciate his hauntingly sad imagery. Bei Dao uses words as if he were fighting for his life with them …. Astonishing and beautiful poems… This is the Bei Dao who has found a way to speak to all of us, the Bei Dao who learned to assimilate the terrible truth, as he tells us in ‘Comet, that what is hard to imagine/ is not darkness but dawn.

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