The great poet Li Po drowned after trying to embrace the moon reflected in the still waters of an isolated lake. These 25 concise and sensuous poems, each paired with a stunning and provocative colour digital artwork, also embrace that incarnation of the tantalizing mystery of our existence in this immense universe that the moon universally symbolizes. The images are startling, and the poems cut to the quick of our emotional vulnerability as strangers in a strange land. It is not just a book for readers of poetry or visual art enthusiasts. It for anyone who has looked at the moon and wondered what it all means. Introducing the works is an interesting historical discussion of the tanka, the pithy verse form used by Li Po and used for all of these poems, as well as an explanation of the inspiration and genesis of the book. Also included are endnotes on all of the works, which possibly may further the reader's appreciation by placing them in a larger context.
About the Author: Ken Stange is a writer, visual artist, occasional scientific researcher, and a Professor Emeritus at Nipissing University--where he still teaches a course on the "Psychology of Art". He was the founder and editor of Nebula Magazine from 1975 to 1984 and currently edits the reincarnated Nebula as an Internet publication. He works in many forms and likes to mix his media. His works include poetry, fiction, arts journalism, scientific research reports, computer programs, philosophical essays, and visual art, and has literally hundreds of periodical publications. In May 2011, he was awarded the Exile/Vanderbilt prize for Short Fiction by an established writer. He has published 12 books of poetry and fiction, and he calls all his books "hypotheses" because of his interest in the integration of the sciences and the arts. His book, A Smoother Pebble, A Prettier Shell, was a collection of his art works integrated with poems and an extended essay on the relationship of science to visual art. While continuing to write and publish poetry and fiction, he has for almost a decade been devoting much of his energy to a major book (The Secret Agents) on the similarities and differences of creativity in the arts and the sciences-an excerpt of which appears in Mercury Press's anthology Imagination In Action, and in 2012 he gave a TEDx talk on that theme.