"A Distant Center moves award-winning fiction writer Ha Jin's astounding poetic talent into the spotlight. Originally inscribed in Chinese and rendered into English by Ha Jin, these poems operate between cultures, languages, and poetic traditions. The result is a generous hybrid space in which vast territory is explored adventurously: exile and immigration, personal memories and current crisis. This poetry confronts China's fraught political history while recalling and embodying its timeless culture and landscape. The poet is plainspoken and insightful, addressing the turmoil of displacement with meditative wisdom, self-reflection, and playfulness. Ha Jin has arrived at the height of his powers as a poet; his is a brilliant mind wrestling gracefully with the pain of an uprooted life"--Back cover.