http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/judith-beveridges-wolf-notes/

So far I’m just a visitor to this book, then, but it offers enough observation, drama, wit and seriousness to make me want to spend more time here.

The first of its three parts, ‘Peregrine’, begins with character sketches of people you might see in an Asian city or countryside – a saffron picker, a pedlar, a bone artisan – and goes on to a miscellany of other subjects – a contemplative walk beside a lake, a suicide, a boy killed by leeches, a mother wrestling with inexplicable sadness, a crew of three on a fishing boat, and so on.

The middle section, ‘Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree’, is described in an introductory note as ‘an imaginative depiction of the time Siddhattha spent wandering in the forests and towns before achieving enlightenment’. I found many of these poems beautiful, especially the ones filled with observations of the natural world, but I have very little clue where they stand in relation to Buddhism: are they devout meditations or relatively unengaged textual games? I think the former, but don’t know enough to be sure.

The third section, ‘Signatures’, is a number of dramatic monologues. ( )