Using several ageless questions—“Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?”—as his point of departure, award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse's epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921, and relates it to...
