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Stone Turtle Poems: 1987-2000 By Mai Mang 167 pages, in Chinese with English translations, photos and author's perspective, "Self-Sketch of a Blindist Poet." Introduction by Russell C. Leong. ISBN: 0-9761698-1-9 Price: US $18 ($23 Can.) (Shipping included; orders from outside U.S. and Canada carry US$2 handling fee) Order 7 copies and receive an 8th book FREE!! Shopping cart Click one of these buttons to order: U.S. Canada Int'l

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Excerpts

From title poem

	Recalling
	Ancient sacred spirit
	Stone turtle
	We meet you
	Faraway in a foreign land
	Do you remember still
	Your once noble origin
	And language

From introduction, "Mai Mang: Writing as Recognition," by Russell C. Leong

In a poem entitled "Truth," written on 1 January 1998, in Beijing, Mai Mang has this to say about seeing and writing:

Yet not a bystander, but with eyes focused straight
Looking at all the heart cannot see
A pen, clumsy and with difficulty
Writes, squeezing out mud, striking sparks

Hidden almost within the pages of the Stone Turtle collection, this small, straightforward poem captures Mai Mang's truthfulness: to the heart, to the eye, to the pen. In "squeezing out mud" one can detect his pale writer's hands and crimson heart almost squeezing earth, water, and blood through the aorta of consciousness. After the mud is squeezed out, Mai Mang jumps to "striking sparks." Both gestures recognize elements that mark his work as whole -- the dynamic interlinking of lyric and history.

From afterword, "Self-Portrait of a Blindist Poet," by Mai Mang

This casual poetic self-sketch reveals as much as it leaves in the blank or dark. Although it is drawn in singular first person form, as lyric poetry often is, it is not intended as self-indulgence. It is about identity, exile, recognition, and so forth, but all in much more broadly defined human terms, and there is a common and anonymous quality in it against the currents of history of the twentieth century (even if I myself only lived through the last third of it).