A Guest Giving Way Like Ice Melting

Grappling with the challenge of Wallace Stevens’ masterpiece, Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, Steve Schroeder and Sou Vai Keng combine the poet’s craft, philosophical ways of thought and the practice of Sinology to reconfigure and metamorphose Laotse’s wisdom book into a poem in totally natural English. The product speaks to our world today with its maddened consumerism, war as national habit, the eternal questions of death and creativity, and the struggle to be rather than just exist. This elegant and beautiful little book helps us understand some of the eternal questions-and some transitory ones as well.