Ascension and Return: Poetry of a Village Daoist

This collection of heartfelt and insightful poems and a few prose poems was written over a 45-year period as the author traveled the world: from Egypt to Bali, from Thailand to Istanbul. It features the poet’s involvement with Daoist transcendent practices and earthly engagement that transforms experiences into dream-like and ecstatic meditation. The strength of [Rene’s] poetry is the brilliant image embedded in the context of the poem, the very same quality I admire so much in Li Po’s and Tu fu’s poetry, as well as in some of Gary Snyder’s earlier poems (and in some of Rexroth’s). -From a letter by the poet Len Roberts