No Water Cleaner than Tears

Yunnan poet Luruo Diji writesin beautifully arranged Mandarin Chinese, but his poetry has its source on the distant periphery of the Chinese cultural world. Many of the poems in this book take place among these great natural formations, dipping in and out of stories of the people that live there, the impressions they left on the land for a moment. Luruo often presents his poems as material pieces of his homeland. The fine earth crumblings of the land’s inspiration pass through his hands and lay on the page.