Kevin Gallagher's Diving at the Moon is a walk through China's history, landscape, and culture as seen through the eyes of an expat. Using the traditional Chinese poetic form of the lu-shi, the poems tell a story of the evolution of a personal relationship to a place and a culture as they move between Beijing and Boston, China and the States, English and Chinese. Gallagher's finely-crafted poems, and their facing translations by Wang Ping, connect the disparate in alternating tones of wistfulness and playfulness with a disarming wonder, open-heartedness, and even, love.
About the Author :
Kevin P. Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston, USA. He has published nine books of poems. His recent works are And Yet it Moves (Mad Hat, 2023), The Wild Goose (Loom Press, 2022), Radio Plays (Dos Madres, 2019), and LOOM (MadHat, 2016). Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston-based annual of poetry and poetics. He works as a professor of global development policy at Boston University. Ping Wang published 15 books of poetry & prose, including The River within（MadHat 2023), My Name Is Immigrant (Hanging Loose 2021), Life of Miracles along Yangtze and Mississippi (Georgia U, 2018), Aching for Beauty (Anchorage 2001). Her work was featured in NYT, PBS, BBC, Moth and others. She's recipient of NEA, Bush, Lannan, McKnight Fellowships, AWP Book Award and many others. She's founder/director of Kinship of Rivers project, Poetry Professor Emerita, Macalester College.
Review :
Kevin Gallagher's Diving at the Moon is a walk through China's history, landscape, and culture as seen through the eyes of an expat. Using the traditional Chinese poetic form of the lu-shi, the poems tell a story of the evolution of a personal relationship to a place and a culture as they move between Beijing and Boston, China and the States, English and Chinese. Gallagher's finely-crafted poems, and their facing translations by Wang Ping, connect the disparate in alternating tones of wistfulness and playfulness with a disarming wonder, open-heartedness, and even, love.
Chloe Garcia Roberts, author of Fire Eater: a Translator's Theology
Thanks to the precise linguistic runway laid down by Poet-translator Wang Ping, Kevin Gallagher's poetry collection lands in China with great success. It fills readers' imaginations with strange yet familiar imagery, details and experiences. It's as if an American poet has gracefully descended the jade steps of Cathay, both real and illusory. I can almost see a kindred spirit of Li Bai and Du Fu, writing poems that Du Fu and Li Bai would likewise understand-because all the world's great poets live in the same village.
Mo Fei, author of The Hollow Emptiness
This bilingual collection, a collaboration between Kevin Gallagher and Wang Ping, leaps across linguistic, historical, and national boundaries in modes that are fresh and surprising. No matter how far these poems roam, their voice is clear and compassionate: "I am right here. You are never alone."
Julian Gewirtz, author of Your Face My Flag
