[A Bei Dao poem] feels as if it follows the pulse of consciousness, as it moves from metaphor to metaphor, thought to thought, something like a pilot light turned down to the jets and flickers of a single, intense, blue flame.

Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World

Unlock

by Bei Dao

Translated from Chinese by Eliot Weinberger

Bei Dao, the internationally acclaimed Chinese poet, has been the poetic conscience of the dissident movements in his country for over twenty years. He has been in exile since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Unlock presents forty-nine recent poems written in the United States, and may well be Bei Dao’s most powerful work to date. Complex, full of startling and sometimes surreal imagery, sudden transitions, and oblique political references, and often embedding bits of bureaucratic speech and unexpected slang, his poetry has been compared to that of Paul Celan and César Vallejo––poets who invented a new poetry and a new language in the attempt to speak of the enormity of their times. The sixth book of Bei Dao’s work published by New Directions, Unlock has been translated by Eliot Weinberger, the distinguished essayist and critically acclaimed translator of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges, in collaboration with the historian lona Man-Cheong and the poet himself.

Paperback(published Sep, 01 2000)

ISBN
9780811214476
Price US
13.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
112
Portrait of Bei Dao

Bei Dao

Contemporary Chinese poet, representative of the Misty Poets.

[A Bei Dao poem] feels as if it follows the pulse of consciousness, as it moves from metaphor to metaphor, thought to thought, something like a pilot light turned down to the jets and flickers of a single, intense, blue flame.

Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World