<div><p>This posthumous collection is a detailed, retrospective look at one of the more brilliant poetic minds of the twenty-first century, and includes an introduction by Bai Hua and afterword by Bei Dao. A dark humor vivifies Zhang Zao's later work as he eroticizes the harrowing: doubt, finality, and then nothingness. The choice of these poems is retrospective: "Mirror," one of his earliest and best known works starts the collection, while "Lantern Town" was written less than two months before his death.</p><p><B>Elegy</B></p><p><I>a letter opens and someone says<BR>it's getting cold<BR>another letter opens<BR>it is empty, empty<BR>yet heavier than the world<BR>a letter opens<BR>someone says he is singing from a mountain height<BR>someone says</I> no, even if the potato was dead<BR>the inertia alive in it<BR>would still grow tiny hands<BR><I>another letter opens<BR>you sleep like a tangerine<BR>but after peeling off your nudity someone says<BR>he has touched another you<BR>another letter opens<BR>they are all laughing<BR>everything around explodes into laughter<BR>a letter opens<BR>clouds and water run wild outside<BR>a letter opens<BR>I am chewing a certain darkness<BR>another letter opens<BR>high moon in the sky<BR>another letter opens and shouts<BR></I>death is something real</p><p>Translator <B>Fiona Sze-Lorrain</B> co-edited the Manoa anthologies, <I>Sky Lanterns</I> (2012) and <I>On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State</I> (2013), and is the translator of three previous Jintian titles, including Lan Lan's <I>Canyon in the Body</I> and <I>Wind Says</I> by Bai Hua.</p></div>