Sea Summit: Poems

Influenced by both the “gray, sinister sea” that came ashore where her artist parents were sent during the Cultural Revolution, and the beauty of the sea in the books she read as a child, Sea Summit is a collection of paradox and questioning. The sea is an impossible force to the poet: It is both a destructive force that predates man, and something to carry with us wherever we go, to be put “by an ancient rattan chair,” so we can watch “it’s waves toss” from above. Exploring the current ecological crisis and our complicated relationship to the wildness around us, Yi Lu finds something more complicated than a traditional nature poet might in the uneasy connection between herself and the forces of nature represented by the boundless ocean.

Translated brilliantly by the acclaimed poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain, this collection of poems introduces a major contemporary Chinese poet to English-language readers.