Back Cover Blurbs

As one who has had the good fortune to see and hear Xi Chuan for some years, publication of Notes on the Mosquito affords the long-anticipated pleasure of reading him. And what a pleasure: this book, with translator Lucas Klein’s introduction, Xi Chuan’s own Afterword, and its bilingual presentation of the poems, is a literary highlight of the year. The sensibility in these poems is unlike anything else in my reading–unique in its knowing, range, humor, smartness–and yet with a humility, an awareness of things larger and older. It will be fun putting this in other readers’ hands.

–Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company