Monday, April 3, 7:00pm
Plymouth Congregational Church
1900 Nicollet Avenue (at Franklin), Minneapolis

Rain Taxi is pleased to join Literary Witnesses and the Loft Literary Center in welcoming Bill Porter, AKA Red Pine, who will read ancient Chinese poems and discuss his latest book, Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets of the Past (Copper Canyon Press).
This event is free and open to the public.

About Red Pine:

Porter is an American Buddhist who has become a legendary China traveler and, as Red Pine, an equally legendary translator of ancient Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts.  In 1970 he dropped out of Columbia University to enter a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan.  After four years living and practicing Zen, he left the monastery, married and eventually was hired by Taiwanese and Hong Kong English-language radio stations to record stories of his mainland travels.  He delivered over a thousand, from the borderlands of wild west drug smugglers to windswept mountaintop Buddhist hermitages. Among his discoveries along the way were poets and Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns still living the hermetic tradition thought eradicated in the Cultural Revolution. In 1993 he returned to the States with his family and settled in Port Townsend, Washington.

His business card reads, "translator."  He was the first to translate the Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, first to translate the entire ancient anthology, Poems of The Masters, first to translate the poetry of fourteenth century Buddhist recluse Stonehouse, and many others, all accompanied by his detailed geographical, historical and literary commentary.  He has also translated Buddhist sutras, including Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Platform Sutra.  His memoir of visiting the ancient hermits of China, Road To Heaven, has been translated into Chinese.

His latest book from Copper Canyon, Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets Of The Past, describes his extensive visits to the shrines and territories of China's most revered poets, a travelers literary encyclopedia like no other.