Yidan Han is the founder and editor of poetrysky.com, a Web site dedicated to the cultural cross-pollination of American and Chinese poetry. She also edits the bilingual quarterly hard-copy journal, Poetry Sky. Born in China, she has lived in Providence for five years now, and is the author of two books of her own poems, as well as a Chinese Dictionary of Rhetoric and other academic books on classical Chinese poetry.

Poetrysky.com is the first bilingual poetry Web site in the world to publish both English and Chinese contemporary poetry and their translations. As Yidan says: “Most poets stand at a point of intersection from which they send out their unique voices. New visions, new ways of thinking inspired me while I was editing the anthology. The spiritual fragrance of poetry is timeless.”

It was only natural that she would arrive at the idea of publishing The Poetry Sky Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 2005-2006. Although online literary journals have become quite popular, people still prefer reading actual books rather than sitting in front of a computer.

All of the poets represented in the anthology were born in the 20th century, some as recently as the 1970s. They are all native Chinese, whether from mainland China, Taiwan, England, The U.S., Singapore, or the Philippines. As might be expected, their styles range from lyrical to surreal to experimental.

The Chinese mind strikes me as inherently poetic, even when expressed in the form of conventional prose. By way of example, here are a few sentences from the anthology’s foreword: “If time were bubbles, some poets would dance on the bubbles, some may look at the bubbles and tell you their temperature, and still others would destroy the bubbles and disappear with them.”

I’ve picked two poems from the anthology’s rich assortment, “A Heart for Home” by Yun He, who has been poetry editor of the World News in the Philippines for 30 years, and “Drinking with an Empty Glass,” one of Yidan’s own pieces. You can buy a copy of The Poetry Sky Anthology by going to poetrysky.com/bookstore.html. Hands across the water!