BOOKS
Plateau Migration is a short collection based upon my Chinese refugee immigrant experience fused with meeting the poetry of the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683–1706). I first encountered these poems while studying translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts and embarking upon an ambitious project to write a historical fiction novel co-authored with Professor Robert Thurman, Indo Tibetan Studies scholar at Columbia University. Though the novel is yet to be published, I began a series of poems in reply to poems I had translated by Tsangyang Gyatso.
“Personal, cosmic, historical, immediate, exotic, and just around the corner—Annie Bien's flashes of poetry intrigue, challenge, and reward the reader who is open to vision and contemplation, keeping the grain of salt of a sense of humor. I heartily recommend migrating to this plateau!”
—Robert A. F. Thurman, Professor and Author
Be with a saint of compassion,
Your mind finds peace and solace.
Be with Annie's poetry,
Your mind will flow in serenity on the plane of profound bliss and nostalgia.
—Geshe Dorji Damdul, Director, Tibet House, New Delhi
Under Shadows of Stars explores the dreamlike illusion of reality in every day life, including the end of the illusion at death. The premise is explored in various ways in these poems. As a child I often wondered “what life would be like if dreams were waking time, and waking time dreams.” Born in Hong Kong, a child of Chinese refugees after World War II, my father’s dream was to give us freedom by moving to the U.S. His dream became the challenge of our reality. As an English translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts, I was struck by the images of dreamlike illusion used as definitions of reality in Buddhist thought. Two verses from two Buddhist scriptures are included as epigraphs that influenced the shape of this collection.
“In these poems, Annie Bien does what so few poets are able to do – to tell stories while never being prosaic. There is warmth here, and a simplicity that is never simple. You want to read these poems quickly, almost as one would a novel, but when you slow down each line strikes you for its muscularity, its strength of lyricism, its wonder.”
—Kei Miller, poet and author, Augustown
“These poems - stylistically very varied - share a rich and compassionate observation of personal and larger history. The poems brim with humour and tenderness for the particulars of life and lives, cherished and sometimes mourned. Illuminating the whole collection is a Buddhist philosophy that is never crudely imposed but permits a wide and gentle view.”
—Elizabeth Cook, poet and author, Achilles