Seven + Two: A Mountain Climber's Journal

Luo Ying is founder and chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group and director of the Chinese Poetry Institute of Peking University. He is author of several collections of poetry in Chinese.Denis Mair has translated the work of numerous Chinese poets into English, including the volumes Reading the Times: Poems of Yan Zhi and Selected Poems by Mai Cheng.Jonathan Stalling is an American poet, scholar, editor, translator, and inventor who works at the intersection of English and Chinese. He is Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

• Introduction 1.Kilamanjaro 2. Chomolungma 3. Brushes with Death4. Mount McKinley5. Mount Elbrus6. The South Pole7. Vinson Massif8. Aconcagua Peak9. Carstensz Pyramid10. The North Pole11. Cho Oyo (highest peak in Tibet)Poems from Green TaraAfterword

“These poems simultaneously celebrate the human spirt and the natural world, just as they critique our impact on the very landscapes within which we dwell. It is my hope that these poems become like mountain passes, navigable routes through the mountain range of different languages, cultures, classes, and ecological experiences. Our planet’s most magnificent mountain ranges have long presented humans with forbidding barriers to travel, trade, and communication, and as such have become deeply lodged into our species psyche. While summiting peaks may provide a fleeting moments of nearly omniscient perspective, poetry can serve as lasting passes through which we may cross for generations to come. “ — Jonathan Stallings