After Yang Chi and Others

Leonard J. Cirino

Inscription
after Yü Chi
in memory

Miracles restored, do the dead respond
to prayer? The bones say no, the ashes yes.
They never forget they arrive at home
where they have many neighbors.
On this seventh day of December
the question is posed: Why have scholars
never found the answer?

ISBN 1-59661-108-1 58 pages/$9

Reading the set of poems after the Later Chinese, I find it remarkable how well you take on the tone of the originals, and how aptly your own Oregon setting and life doubles for those of the old philosopher poets in their countryside haunts.
—James Torrens, S.J.
poetry editor of America (NYC)

Leonard Cirino’s poems capture their tone and spirit of the classical Chinese poets far better than conventional translations do. Cirino’s own sensibility—his grasp of the natural symbol and his sense of humanity’s modest place in the cosmos—accords so well with that of Yang Chi, Yuan Hung-tao, and others, that he closes the gap between their centuries and ours.
—William Doreski

I started reading Chinese poetry during my young manhood. I liked it because it was other-directed and not inner-directed. I also liked the fact that it explored the spiritual through the natural. This collection of poetry, After Yang Chi and Others, is a real treat and a real pleasure. Wallace Stevens once wrote: “In the absence of a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.” These poems redeemed me.
—Dave McCain