Overview
Sidetracks, Bei Daoās first new collection in almost fifteen years, is also the poetās first long poem and his magnum opusāthe artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. āAs a poet, I am always lost,ā Bei Dao once said. Opening with a prologue of heavenly questions and followed by thirty-four cantos, Sidetracks travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poetās wandering lifeāfrom his time as a Young Pioneer in Beijing, through the years of exile living in six countries, back to the rural construction site where he worked during the Cultural Revolution, to the āsunshine tableclothā in his kitchen in Davis, California, and his emotional visit home after a thirteen-year separation (āthe mother tongue has deepened my foreignnessā). All the various currents of our times rush into his lifelines, reconfigured through the āvortex of experienceā and the poetās encounters with friends and strangers, artists and ghosts, as he moves from place to place, unable to return home. As the poet Michael Palmer has noted, āBei Daoās work, in its rapid transitions, abrupt juxtapositions, and frequent recurrence to open syntax evokes the un-speakability of the exileās condition. It is a poetry of explosive convergences, of submersions and unfixed boundaries, āamid languages.āāĀ Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
This book title, Sidetracks, ISBN: 9780811238441, by Bei Dao, Jeffrey Yang, published by New Directions (May 14, 2024) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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