Wu wei

"In spare and resonant language, the first half of this collection hallows a memory of the author's time spent in China, evoking the exotic sights and smells of the villages he visited--the overnight sleeper to Chengdu, a young girl butchering her first chicken, street monkeys dancing for a crowd. Upon returning home, every piece of the ordinary world seems washed clean and the poems of the second half are infused with Buddhist sentiment and Eastern thought, laying hold of the mundane as the medium through which profundity and grace can be found."--Publisher's website.