A Guest Giving Way Like Ice Melting, Steven Schroeder and Debby Sou Vai Keng
Temple, TX: Ink Brush Press. ISBN 9780982440575.
Grappling with the challenge of Wallace Stevens’ masterpiece, “Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird,” Steven Schroeder and Debby Sou Vai Keng combine the poet’s craft, philosophical ways of thought and the practice of Sinology to reconfigure and metamorphose Laozi’s wisdom book into a long poem in totally natural English. The product speaks to our world today with its maddened consumerism, war as national habit, the eternal questions of death and creativity, and the struggle to be rather than just exist. This elegant and beautiful little book helps us understand some of the eternal questions – and some transitory ones as well.
-Paul Friedrich, University of Chicago
Our days are filled with rush and worries, but the words and breathtaking inks of Steven Schroeder and Debby Sou Vai Keng transport us into an ancient place, where time is marked in movements of sun and moon and bloom. We are invited into a world of thought, contemplation, and moment; we are asked to behold beauty for the sake of beauty, and given the treasure of insight, like pearls on the tongue – jewels that shape our very existence.
karla k. morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate
一种晶莹剔透的语言和另一种晶莹剔透的语言相互映照，使读者看见诗性和情感在不同的心灵中发生，正如茂盛的事物在它们单个的、不可知的小小宇宙中生成。无论是从李耳还是史蒂文·施罗德的心灵宇宙中，我们都看到了人不得不使用语言，不得不驱使某种诗性去拯救自我的无辜和寂寥。史蒂文·施罗德阅读《老子》，醉心于李耳的哲学，充分说明西方哲学家和诗人对东方早慧的智慧的青睐和认同。中国文化作为一种诗化文化，可以软化西方文化中坚硬的理性主义。在史蒂文·施罗德的身上，在他的诗歌作品中，我们可以看到西方文化的精神，也可以洞见东方文化的气质。两种文化在一个诗人的身上及其作品中合流，本身就是一件文化交流的幸事。
李森, 云南大学
When one crystal-clear language mirrors another, the reader sees poetry and emotion rise from two different hearts in the way luxuriant things come into being in their tiny, individual, unknowable universes. In the spiritual universes of both Li Er and Steven Schroeder we can see that one must use language, must use poetry, to rescue one’s innocence and solitude. Schroeder reads Lao Zi and is intoxicated by Li Er’s philosophy. This is all about how a Western philosopher and poet celebrates and identifies with germinating wisdom of the East. The poetic culture of China can soften the hard rationalism of Western culture. In Steven Schroeder and his poetry we can see both the spirit of the West and the temperament of the East. When two cultures flow together in one poet and his poetry, it is a stroke of good fortune for cultural exchange.
Li Sen, Yunnan University
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