The End of Life and Other Poems 人之终诗集

The is a bilingual book of poems that were written over a forty-year period. It includes three-word rhymes, five-word and seven-word quatrains, couplets, free verses, and songs (hymns).

They reminisce about the past, comment on the present, and aspire for a better future. They celebrate natural beauty and human fidelity, mourn over career misplacement and lost friendship, and long for a faith that is beyond the temporal.

They crystallize the poet's frustrations and disappointment and shine a light on the poet's thoughts. They elevate a relatively mundane activity into an art form, to use as few words as possible to record succinctly and precisely one's interaction with life's vicissitudes. Among its themes are chance, emptiness, friendship, power, and the flow of life.

But this is more than just a collection of poems. It is also an introduction to the versatility of Chinese language and culture. They show the creation of word pictures through placement and connection of words, phrases, rhymes and rhythms, and the pervasive influence of idioms, literary allusions, and historical figures even now.

Each of the poems is presented in four or five phases: (1) The Chinese text in traditional scripts, (2) The pinyin version of the text, (3) The translation of each line of the poem, (4) The meaning of significant words and phrases, and (5) The creative process.

In a feast of Chinese literature, this is merely a dimsum dish albeit infused with a touch of western spices, but its taste would allure you for the fuller authentic Chinese banquets around.