Book of Reincarnation

Hsu Hui-Chih. Green Integer, $9.95 (64pp) ISBN 978-1-931243-32-2

Born in 1966, Hsu Hui-Chih is one of Taiwan's more prominent emerging poets. Sheng-Tai Chang has translated his sixth collection of poems into English as Book of Reincarnation. An attention to the uniqueness of the Taiwanese landscape (and to its destruction) marks the book, while a cluster of Buddhist poems are tightly focused and full of complication. In ""A Flea Listens to Buddha's Teaching,"" the flea narrator who lives on Buddha's body proclaims that he has ""known a long time that you have no dharma to teach me and I have no dharma to learn from you"" and yet, ""Now that I am still on this side, how can I burn the boat?"" (June)

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