The Clouds Should Know Me by Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China

This book is a collection of poems translated from the Chinese by talented scholars and edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor, masters at their craft. Written by Buddhist monks, these spare, elegant poems represent work spanning the 1100 years from the middle T’ang dynasty to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Full of references to nature, sometimes reflecting sadness then fleeting moments of calm pleasure, they are a feast for the mind and soul. Offering at times profound spiritual insights, they call us to moments of quiet reflection—soul searching, so to speak.

This morning
laughing together
just a few such days
in a hundred.

After birds pass
over Sword Gate, it’s calm;
invaders from the south
have withdrawn to the Lu River wilds.

We walk on frosted ground
praising chrysanthemums bordering fields
sit on the east edge of the woods,
waiting for the moon to rise.

Not having to be alone
is happiness:
we do not talk
of failure or success.

-Yvonne

Natasha Tretheway was recently in Jackson to receive the Governor’s Award for literary excellence in the arts. I had the opportunity to hear her read from her Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poetry, Native Guard. She read in her rich, expressive voice the poem which sets the tone for this remarkable volume, written for her mother, in memory.

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from “Theories Of Time And Space”:

“You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been, Try this….”

Tretheway speaks of her childhood in the Deep South—she, the product of a white father and a black mother:

“In 1964 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi”

She also speaks of the Louisiana Native Guards–a black regiment serving in the Civil War:

” The ghost of history lies down beside me”

The poems are profound and moving–poems to be read more than once, each reading providing new insight and enjoyment.

-Yvonne

“The Outlander deserves to be read twice, first for the plot and the complex characters which make this a page-turner of the highest order, and then a second time, slowly, to savor the marvel of Gil Adamson’s writing. This novel is a true wonder.” —Ann Patchett

Contrary to the title, Out Stealing Horses is not about rounding up the neighbor’s horses and galloping away. The title refers to holding onto tree limbs and letting go right as horses pass underneath to chance a few moments of sheer joy as two young men, two main characters in this sweep of a beautiful book set in Norway around the post WWII era, share their early youth and are bound through memory for the rest of their lives.

This was chosen by the New York Times as the Best Book of 2007 and rights have sold in 24 countries. The book begins with 67 year old Trond Sander, living alone in a cabin deep in the Norwegian woods where he seeks refuge from the tragic death of his wife. While reading this book, I felt like the novelist Mr. Petterson parted the curtains and took me by his own hand into the snowy fields and innermost heart and mind of Trond. Mr. Petterson gently unfolds layer upon layer of one’s man history, then stitches it back together, bringing us into the present without realizing we ever left it. He does this with such ease and sparse but double rich prose and depth of human understanding that at the end, we are completely satisfied even though we may not know the whole truth about this man and the relationship he had with his beloved father.

In the background are hints of spying for the Resistance during the war, secret excursions into Sweden, death-accidental and otherwise-great love in troubled times. On the surface is a story about 67 year old Trond who discovers a childhood acquaintance also living in the lonely woods far from the comforts of civilization.

I would chose this book as my favorite for 2007 but it also rates up there as one of the best I’ve read as an adult. -Pat