Seeking the Cave

An award-winning academic, advertising executive, and journalist, James Lenfestey has published four poetry collections and a book of personal essays. The chair of the Literary Witnesses poetry series, he lives in Minneapolis.

CONTENTS PREFACE: Han-Shan Haibun PROLOGUE: My Own Private China BOOK I FINDING THE PATH On the Road Between Two Hurricanes Encounter with the Arch-Translator Passage to More than Kyoto Kyoto Koan Rendezvous at Narita Beijing: The Biggest Bell in the World In Xanadu Did Genghis Khan Jia Dao and the Riddle of Sound and Sense BOOK I I FROM BUDDHIST TEMPLES TO SOARING CRANES Buddhists for the Night Breakfast with Confucius Speedways, Corn Roads, and Apple Lanes Ordinary and Extraordinary Graves Du Fu's Sorrow Bai Juyi's "Idle Droning" What the Old Master Wrote The Soaring Cranes of Xi'an Road to Heaven First Adventure in Hermit Hunting An Evening with Dr. Hu Turtles All the Way Down BOOK I I I SLEEPLESS DREAMS TO DREAMLESS SLEEP Give It Its True Name Moon Music Drinking Wine with Li Bai Two Depressing Poems in Wuhu Beginning-to-Believe Peak The Floating World of Poet-Engineers "Six" and the Single Traveler Cold Mountain: Whose Story Is It? The Hermit of Cold Mountain "The Birds and Their Chatter" The Nun's Priest's Tale One New God Meanwhile, Back in the Ka-ching EPILOGUE: Christmas Morning POSTSCRIPT: Finding My Own True Name APPENDIX : Coda; Endnotes; Permissions, List of Sources