Broad sea and empty sky

de Zhimo Xu

"Xu Zhimo (1897-1931) was China's first great modern poet and a major figure of the intellectual revolution that shaped modern China. He was educated in China and abroad, including at King's College, Cambridge; his poem about leaving that beloved school is known by practically every Chinese, and each year hundreds of thousands of them make the pilgrimage to the memorial and garden established there in his honor. A world traveler who lived a short life during tumultuous times, he was in contact with every major Chinese literary figure of his day, and met and was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore, Thomas Hardy, Katherine Mansfield, and Bertrand Russell, among others. Xu fused elements of foreign poetic styles with native Chinese traditions to create a body of work that spoke to his contemporaries at a critical time in their history, and still speaks today. This book presents the largest selection of Xu’s poems available in English, as well as excerpts from some of his prose works. Essays and commentary put the poet in context for English-speaking readers and reveal links between his works and other modern poetry, both Chinese and non-Chinese."--Publisher description.