I've been packing away the book shelves and this was one of the last books to go into a box. Mike gave me a copy of The Basin when I was in Port Townsend last December. I read the poems during my Centrum retreat with the intention of writing Mike a long letter about his poems. I reread the book this past week and slipped a letter in the post yesterday.

The Basin is a luminous and panoramic collection of poems written about Mike's experiences of living in Taipei in the 1980s. He explores the tension between the modern city and traditional culture and lifeways. One of my favorite poems in the collection is about a gift. The poet is sitting at his writing desk, unable to write, as his neighbor noisily pounds aluminum cans in preparation for taking them to the recycling plant where refunds are issued. When the poet walks out to talk to his neighbor, he is taken off guard when she surprises him with a box of bean cakes that her husband had driven all the way from Taichung. Like this poem, the entire collection that is The Basin is its own kind of gift to the reader and to the places and people of Taiwan. The poems celebrate deep friendships, affinities and affections, and a wonder at the interconnected - "all the rivers shining." Two of the poems in the collection also explore the power of the imagination and the poem to set the heart free - a narrative about a caged monkey and another about what could be unrequited love. In the poem about the monkey, the poet contemplates buying the monkey to set him free, just as Buddhist monks do - yet, the monkey would only be recaptured to be put back on display at market. The other poem is of a recognition of love that cannot be, though the heart is full with love in that recognition and moment of seeing.

What I love about this collection is the depiction of Taiwan in the poems - that the places, character, and images though frozen in a particular time in the poet's experience are still the sorts of experiences that can be encountered in Taiwan. The immediacy of experience in O'Connor's writing in The Basin and the beauty of the narrative voice shine and provide a deep counterpoint to the poet's recent prose memoir of Montesano, Washington.

Still to read and then pack: Red Pine's Zen Baggage and several Peter Levitt collections.