Burying the Mountain

In Shangyang Fang's debut Burying the Mountain, saturated images of longing and loss rush through a portal of difficult beauty. Exiled begonias are "lit huge like eyes," as absence is translated into fire ants and snow, and a boy's desire is transfigured into the indifference of mountains and rivers. Lapping and twisting dimensions between a Song Dynasty ink-wash painting and a makeshift bedroom in Chengdu, the poems meditate, breach, and weave the crevices of intimacy, eros, and grief. Deeply immersed in the music of ancient Chinese poetry, Fang alloys political erasure, exile, remembrance, and death into a single brushstroke on the silk scroll, where our names are forgotten as paper boats on water.