MIDNIGHT'S GATE

The writings in this volume by the internationally known Chinese dissident poet are called "essays," but read more like amalgamations after the fact of diary entries sorted by subject. They cover his many travels, from his native China—where he toiled as a concrete worker and iron mixer—to the California home he later inhabited and far-flung poetry conferences he has attended over the years. The pieces seem like the haphazardly arranged memories of a rootless man. And while most seem to have sprung somewhere in the distant past from a consideration of people who have crossed paths with the author over the course of his career, the book's title is taken from the most anomalous piece, which passionately discusses a trip he took as a member of a delegation of the International Parliament of Writers to visit an embattled Palestinian writer and his land. Chinese prose is very different in tenor and organizing principles than English, and translations can end up rather flat, so it's hard to say whether the weaknesses of this volume stem from the original composition or its translation. While it's occasionally insightful and contains a moment or two of sly wit, the prose remains strangely affectless and so completely unaffecting. (May 27)