The Winter Sun

"A collage of essays on childhood, language, spiritual biographies, and the writer's life, 'a vocation has no name'"--P. [4] of cover.

Shi Zhi has been a major force in Chinese poetry since 1968, when several of his poems were circulated as secret handwritten manuscripts in the midst of China’s Cultural Revolution. He gave voice to the aspirations of dispirited youth, and although once relegated to obscurity, he is today celebrated as one of China’s most important cultural influences, having spawned the modern Chinese poetry revolution of the 1980s. This collection of Shi Zhi’s most significant poems, featuring an afterword by the poet himself, is the first book-length publication of his work in English. Born as Guo Lusheng in 1948, at the height of the Chinese Civil War, Shi Zhi joined the People’s Liberation Army at the age of twenty-three. Discharged early, he entered into a period of severe depression and spent much of the next three decades living in mental hospitals under harsh conditions. Taking the pen name of Shi Zhi, meaning “index finger,” to evoke the image of people pointing at his back, he continued to write poetry through these tumultuous years, chronicling his journey from the heights of fame to the depths of institutionalism and ultimately to a final redemptive return to society in 2005. The voice of this besieged poet, burdened with exile and illness, captured the spirit of his generation and now inspires young readers. By presenting Shi Zhi’s poems in chronological order, Winter Sun allows readers to appreciate the evolution of his poetry from his earliest work to his most recent poems. Masterfully translated by Jonathan Stalling, and with an introduction by leading poetry critic Zhang Qinqua, this landmark collection ensures that Shi Zhi’s poetry—so important to Chinese readers during the most challenging of times—will engage the hearts and minds of new readers the world over for years to come.

Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export. Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene charts Shiki's revolutionary (and often contradictory) experiments with haiku and tanka, a dynamic process that made the survival of these traditional genres possible in a globalizing world. Keene particularly highlights random incidents and encounters in his impressionistic portrait of this tragically young life, moments that elicited significant shifts and discoveries in Shiki's work. The push and pull of a profoundly changing society is vividly felt in Keene's narrative, which also includes sharp observations of other recognizable characters, such as the famous novelist and critic Natsume Soseki. In addition, Keene reflects on his own personal relationship with Shiki's work, further developing the nuanced, deeply felt dimensions of its power.

Most would agree that people, in so many walks of life, have lost sight of the importance of treating one another with kindness and respect. In this inspired collection of poetry and prose, the author revisits what he considers to be life's core lessons for success and happiness. Through his recently "retired" eyes, he offers a personal retrospective, as well as a prospective commitment to practice the lessons in this new stage of his life. Moreover, he shares hope that readers will not see these lessons as being reserved for days when they can enjoy the "late winter sun;" rather, that they will see them as compatible with any journey through life, at any stage, on whatever path they follow in the world, whatever their goals may be....

He'd do anything to keep her safe...except give her up.Declan lost her once. Never again. He is an archmage. Fearsome. Terrible. Divine. Yet deadly whispers dare echo in his ear. None more threatening than those of his still-incomplete mate bond and his love's failing health. In a twist of irony, he must now protect his mate from the greatest danger she's ever faced...himself.Evangeline was raised to be an apothecarist, not an archmage's queen. She knows nothing of the subtle maneuverings of court life, and despite her awakened memories, she remains painfully human. Too human to claim an archmage for a mate. But Declan's contentious council and her questionable mortality aren't the only things she has to worry about. The secrets of her past are catching up, and even her all-powerful lover may not be able to keep her safe?Winter Sun is the seductive sequel in the Warriors of the Five Realms adult fantasy romance series that will submerge you in a dazzling court of deadly secrets and deception lurking in every shadow?

Beautifully crafted, fearlessly passionate first novel. - The Globe and Mail