​“The Magpie at Night teaches us many a lesson of transformations: we learn that hair “grieves” and the water clock is “quiet,” we learn that the “pot of spring” can break apart memory. But most of all, we learn that poetry can survive the ravages of war and time, and after many centuries—thanks to Wendy Chen’s clarifying translations—the Song dynasty classic visits us in English. I am grateful for such transformations.” — Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

"Wendy Chen translates with a true poet's sensitivity to language, metaphor, and image. Indeed, to bring Li Qingzhao's poems to an English-speaking audience with such precision and obvious skill is a remarkable achievement. Here are poems as timeless as they are timely, as mysterious as they are rewarding."
—Kristina Marie Darling, author of Daylight Has Already Come: Selected Poems

"Li Qingzhao's poems conjure the sound of rain on banana leaves, pale clouds "smudging the moon," the momentary solace of a dream, and how "longing saturates the human world, / the heavens." Her remarkable attention is gifted to us by Wendy Chen's remarkable acuity."—Michael Prior, author of Burning Province

"To read Li Qingzhao's work is to feel an intensity of spirit that says—even time cannot erase me. Wendy Chen's brilliant new translation ought to ensure that remains true. What heartache, what imagery, what absolute mastery there is in every line here." —John Freeman, author of Wind, Trees

"One of the most powerful poets in history, fully present after a thousand years in these amazing new translations, is Li Qingzhao, a woman celebrated in China but known to few readers of English. In my lifetime several poems were translated by Kenneth Rexroth, who twenty years later published a small edition of Li’s collected work. Thirty years after that, Ronald Egan’s expert translations and scholarship on Li’s life and work appeared. These were my prime access to her work. Now, in Wendy Chen’s fluent translations from the original Mandarin, we celebrate the consummate delivery of great poems by a fine poet into breathtakingly vivid English. For this gift, delivered across thousands of miles and a thousand years into the living mind and heart, I bow in amazement and thanks." —Brooks Haxton, author of Mister Toebones