Largely unknown during his lifetime, 海子 / Hai Zi (1964-1989) has attained posthumous recognition as one of the most important figures in Chinese contemporary poetry. Born and raised in a farming village in Anhui Providence, he passed the entrance exam to Beijing University at fifteen. At twenty, he started teaching philosophy and art theory at China University of Political Science and Law. During the last five or six years of his life, he wrote over two hundred haunting and memorable lyric poems and several epics. He committed suicide in 1989 by laying himself on a railroad track at Beijing Shanhaiguan. More than a dozen books of his work have been published posthumously. This bilingual edition, selected and translated by Ye Chun, gathers seventy of Hai Zi's best lyrical poems.
Considered one of the most influential living poets in Chinese language today, Yang Jian was born in Anhui Province, China in 1967 and began writing poetry during the mid-80s. Since the 90s, he has won numerous literary awards, including Yiu Li’an Poetry Award (1995), Rougang Poetry Award (2000), Yulong Poetry Award (2006), and the prestigious Chinese Media Literature Award (2008). A practicing Buddhist and scholar of Chinese traditional culture, Yang Jian also paints with ink and brush. This bilingual edition, co-translated by Ye Chun, Paul B. Roth, and Gillian Parrish, for the first time brings a collection of Yang Jian's poems to the English reader.
美国华裔诗人李立扬 / Li-Young Lee（1957-）出生于雅加达，童年时期曾随父母颠沛流离，辗转于中国香港和澳门以及日本，后于1964年到达美国。他的第一本诗集《玫瑰》于1986出版，并在美国诗坛引起轰动，其后诗集《我爱你的城市》（1990）和《我的夜晚之书》（2001）同样获得高度赞誉，并更加坚固地奠定了李立扬在美国文坛的地位。本译集首次收集李立扬第四及第五诗集 Behind My Eyes (《眼睛后面》) 和 Undressing (《脱衣》)的中文翻译。《眼睛后面》 出版于2008年，作者自言“我想我必须经历一些真正的荒野，纠结的藤蔓……经历对我是谁、何为语言、何为诗、我为何写作这些问题的种种困惑才能到达这本书”。家庭、个人和集体的经历以及诗人与宗教和文字的关系，相互交织萦绕，构成一本既复杂深邃又明晰感人的诗集。十年后，《脱衣》成为李立扬的第五本诗集，一些主题在书中重温再现，一些诗行也移植于新的诗句中，仿佛一首新的交响乐包容了从前的题材和旋律，使得耳熟之处更加铭心，簇新之处更显激荡。