Conversations with Li He

More than any other Irish poet of our times, Rosenstock has long engaged in a remarkable dialogue with the poetry of the east. Here, in one of his finest collections ever, he speaks to the spirit of the doomed Li He, who died in his twenties. In these finely tuned lyrical conversations, we are brought 'over the hills and far away' into a world where we smell plum blossoms and courtesans' perfume; we hear cuckoo calls and 'dancing music from all quarters'; and enter an ancient world of war, drought and plague that has uncanny resonances of our own age. These beautiful and glittering poems 'sing to the stars', both in Rosenstock's exquisite original Irish and in Gary Bannister's lucent English translations. - Liam Carson, Director IMRAM festival, author of call mother a lonely field