Seven + Two: A Mountain Climbers Journal: A Mountain Climber's Journal
By (Author) Luo Ying
Translated by Denis Mair
White Pine Press
White Pine Press
3rd February 2021
United States
General
Non Fiction
The Earth: natural history: general interest
Mountains and uplands
Paperback
320
Width 152mm, Height 228mm
Even at high-altitude acclimatization camps, he did not stop writing poems in his 7+2 Mountain Climber's Diary. He climbed and trekked to the most pristine vantage points on earth, from which he contemplated his life in the 21st century. He carried his poetic sensibility to the peaks.
These poems simultaneously celebrate the human spirt and the natural world, just as they critique our impact on the very landscapes within which we dwell. It is my hope that these poems become like mountain passes, navigable routes through the mountain range of different languages, cultures, classes, and ecological experiences. Our planets most magnificent mountain ranges have long presented humans with forbidding barriers to travel, trade, and communication, and as such have become deeply lodged into our species psyche. While summiting peaks may provide a fleeting moments of nearly omniscient perspective, poetry can serve as lasting passes through which we may cross for generations to come. Jonathan Stallings
Luo Ying is founder and chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group and director of the Chinese Poetry Institute of Peking University. He is author of several collections of poetry in Chinese. Denis Mair has translated the work of numerous Chinese poets into English, including the volumes Reading the Times: Poems of Yan Zhi and Selected Poems by Mai Cheng. Jonathan Stalling is an American poet, scholar, editor, translator, and inventor who works at the intersection of English and Chinese. He is Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.