Shi Zhi has been a major force in Chinese poetry since 1968, when several of his poems were circulated as secret handwritten manuscripts in the midst of China's Cultural Revolution. He gave voice to the aspirations of dispirited youth, and although once relegated to obscurity, he is today celebrated as one of China's most important cultural influences, having spawned the modern Chinese poetry revolution of the 1980s. This bilingual collection of Shi Zhi's most significant poems, featuring an afterword by the poet himself, is the first book-length publication of his work in English.

Born...