Burying the Mountain

Highly anticipated debut collection by young Chinese poet Themes of youth, distance, queerness, and solitude. Music functions as a unifying language, and he adapts its forms--chaconne, aria, funeral march, requiem--to guide his meditations on the immigrant experience. Fang alternates seamlessly between his adopted English and his native Mandarin Louise Gluck is a huge fanFang frequently reaches for both the Chinese traditions of poetry and painting and the European canons of literature, philosophy, and classical music for thematic guidance. He immigrated to the US by himself while still in high schoolFang cuts to the bone of Chinese communist politics amid a personal identity crisis in "A Difficult Apple," which unfolds as a series of barroom arguments between lovers.