Old Snow: Poetry

by Bei Dao and Bonnie S. McDougall

Book Overview

The three sections of Bei Dao's affecting new book of poems, Old Snow --"Berlin," "Oslo," "Stockholm"--are poignant reminders of the restless and rootless life of the exile. All the poems in the present bilingual volume were written post-Tiananmen Square (June 4, 1989), and the poet refers back to this watershed both overtly ("Not your bodies but your souls/ shall share a common birthday') and in dense images of loss and betrayal ("old snow comes...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811211827
• ISBN13: 9780811211826
• Release Date: November 1991
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 81 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.7" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Masterpiece of a Modern Poet

Even in translation Bei Dao's poetry has a dark and quiet strength to it. The poems have a life about them, so that you could read them once and get one thing out of it and then read it again and get another. His style, even when dealing with politics, doesn't try to force its point. Rather, it slowly sinks in-- in a matter-of-fact way. When I read a book of poetry I tend to dog-ear the pages of poems that strike me in a special way. By the time I was done with this one almost the entire book was marked. The style of poetry is especially clean, yet has the flare of spontaneity. Bei Dao's poems are especially interesting to me as a poet, because the language of Chinese poetry exiled out of China tends to be one of his primary concerns. This is a book highly worth reading-- and reading again.