Guide to Recollecting the Future

In this debut collection in English, one of China’s most famous poets offers biting musings on politics, ideologies, and mortality. Yang Xiaobin is a household name in both Chinese and Taiwanese poetry circles. He was part of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and after the government crackdown, left for graduate school in America. While in the US, he began a prolific career as a poet before moving to Taiwan, where he now lives, writes, and teaches. Several of the book’s poems satirize the use of “-ism” ideology, which was popular among Chinese intellectuals after the country opened up in 1978. Others come from his “Guidebook” series, offering “instructions” on different aspects of a rapidly commercializing lifestyle. While most of the poems are recent, the book will include some of his most representative and best-known older poems, without which no first collection could be complete. The volume includes a critical afterword by the translator.