Anniversary Snow

Anniversary Snow (2019) by Yang Lian
Publisher: Shearsman Books
ISBN: 9781848616707
Condition: Good
Sold by: Crappy Old Books

There are poetry collections that invite you to settle into a comfortable chair with a cup of tea, contemplate the beauty of nature and congratulate yourself on being terribly cultured. Then there is Anniversary Snow by Yang Lian, which is rather more likely to overturn the chair, freeze the tea and leave you questioning the nature of existence, history and your own distinctly inadequate grasp of metaphysics.

Yang Lian, one of China’s most internationally celebrated contemporary poets, has never been particularly interested in producing cheerful little verses about daffodils. Born in Switzerland in 1955, raised in China and subsequently driven into exile following the political upheavals surrounding the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he has spent much of his literary career exploring memory, displacement, identity and the uncomfortable relationship between the individual and the machinery of history. Not exactly the sort of material that lends itself to a novelty birthday card.

Anniversary Snow, published by Shearsman Books in 2019, belongs to that uncompromising tradition. Here, snow is considerably more than a picturesque meteorological inconvenience. It becomes an evocative presence associated with time, remembrance, loss and the peculiar human habit of commemorating events that we might privately prefer had never happened. Anniversaries, after all, are supposed to be occasions for celebration, although history has supplied rather too many that demand something considerably less festive than a cake.

Yang’s poetry is richly layered, intellectually demanding and frequently unsettling. Images accumulate, meanings shift and the reader is invited to navigate a landscape in which personal experience and collective memory refuse to remain conveniently separated. Those expecting a straightforward narrative may find themselves in much the same position as somebody attempting to assemble flat-pack furniture without instructions, except that the furniture represents human existence and several of the components appear to have been confiscated by history.

Yet this is precisely what makes Yang Lian such a compelling poet. His work refuses the comforting fiction that the past is safely behind us. History persists, language remembers and even silence can acquire an alarming eloquence. There is beauty here, certainly, but it is a beauty accompanied by shadows, questions and the occasional philosophical ambush.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning it has experienced a little of the physical world itself, although mercifully nothing approaching the historical and existential turbulence contemplated within its pages.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where we believe that difficult poetry deserves a good home, preferably one containing a patient reader, a functioning central heating system and absolutely no expectation that everything will make sense before bedtime.

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