BURYING THE MOUNTAIN

An innovative debut from Shangyang Fang, a freshfaced 26-year-old who styles himself an “outcast” in the Chinese poetry world, this poetry collection is based on longing and loss. It blends the structure of Bach’s fugues and Proust’s nostalgic meditation with the musicality of classical Chinese and imagery from Fang’s childhood home in Chengdu. Fang, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University’s creative writing program, makes bold experimentation in a few pieces, attempting to harmonize Chinese and English. Readers fluent in Chinese and English, caught between both literary worlds, may find pleasure in this special work.