Wednesday, February 17, 2016

BILL PORTER RIDES ! ~




 C O P P E R     C A N Y O N     P R E S S    2016



49



Woods and springs make me smile

no kitchen smoke for miles

clouds rise up from rocky ridges

cascades tumble down

a gibbon's howl makes the path clearer

a tiger's roar transcends the world

pine wind sighs so softy

birds discuss singsong

I walk the winding streams

and climb the peaks alone

sometimes I sit on a boulder

or lie down and gaze at trailing vines

but when I see a distant town

all I hear is noise


Shih-te







 B I L L     P O R T E R     R E D     P I N E



A book like no other, but then Bill Porter/translator Red Pine (one in the same fellow)
is like no other. A treasury of a book that will take the reader many readings to fully hold as we travel with Bill on his pilgrimages throughout China, paying visits and homages with cups of Kentucky whiskey, perhaps a poem read at the site, certainly a bow, to dozens of China's greatest poets. He will break some bones getting there, wait with good healing and patience months to return on his journey, but finish and completeness there is. You will feel it with him. There is no translator, or even a living poet I know of, who brings you fully into the embrace.

[ BA ]