---

---

The wisest writers-like the best musicians-know how to use the silence, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better example than what Peter Bethanis has done here. The energy and well-crafted humor of these poems is eclipsed only by their humility, the rain-like ease with which they ghost into our lives then disappear, quietly nourishing those they leave behind.

Michael Meyerhofer, author of What to Do if You’re Buried Alive

With poems ranging from the pastoral to whimsical, Bethanis offers a breadth of style in this collection. He journeys through three voices-Li Po, Li Hua, and the Sophist, woven into a collection that seems in places to sing. Throughout we see the author break in at moments, in poems like “The Young Somnambulists,” considering the dichotomy of the world.

Emily Scalzo, poet

I might say that somewhere in the air, suspended between the quiet poetry of ancient China, twenty-first century sorrow, and slippery moments of epiphany, Peter Bethanis’ Li Po, Li Hua, and the Sophist hovers like a hummingbird-or a drone, depending on the century. Or maybe I’d say these poems are little ants carrying loads much bigger than their own bodies, picking our strange world apart one crumb at a time. I might say he’s captured the thinness of our understanding and the thickness of our need. I might say a lot, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you see for yourself how Bethanis weaves disparate cultures, time periods, and moods into this singular, beautiful book.

Peter Davis, author of Hitler’s Mustache and editor of Poet’s Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books that Shaped Their Art

---