He has four books out now and he is from the West Coast. Lives in Santa Cruz. Signatures and Sleep of Rivers are his earliest two books, followed by Below Cold Mountain and now Country of Lights. The last two on Copper Canyon. He has his fair share of poems to Li Po, Tu Fu and Han Shan. Why not? I mean, if you're going to converse with a poet across the years, those hermitreclusepoets are always good listeners. And more grateful than most for the company I think.
Here is a short poem from one of his earlier collections:
The Singing, The Darkness, The Earth as Language
But how to accommodate death?
Tsang-kie invented writing, it is said,
by observing bird tracks around the lake.
From their prints he could tell what songs
had been there. But the night birds
leave no tracks. The owl under the sickle moon
glides quietly through the dark,
touches down only to seize its prey.
We know its home by the droppings
of skulls
and bits of powered bone.
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