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10 Stories Down
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This collection of poems inspired by years of visits to the People's Republic of China prods the reader to take a deeper look at the meaning of love, life and their own direction on its path.
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Reviewers call the work:
An antidote for the closed assumptions most of us carry toward unfamiliar places and cultures, 10 Stories Down, an honest record of one man’s inner journey. The author shares a remarkable trek as a guest teacher in Beijing. The title indicates the view from his apartment, and also signifies the isolation of a stranger who may play the detached flâneur, but the bond with his students breaks through this separation, and Golphin discovers on closer observation many points of connection, including, surprisingly, basketball in Beijing, a “universal rite” that makes“flags and philosophies fade into the air.”There are many delightful angles of vision in this book, from contemplating the gnarled “three-legged tree” in Da Jue Garden, to discovering chit’lins in China, to reminiscing about childhood while watching a kite (“a triangle on the wind”) ten floors up, or a Chinese boy and girl scratch their names in “snowy dust on a track field.”
-- John Roche, author of Road Ghosts and Topicalities
Weaving humor and pathos with the political, true self-myth anecdotes dancing the streets of Beijing, Golphin has brought this North American closer to an understanding of the people and landscape of China than before having this manuscript in my hands. The foreign truly does become familiar and 'that knowledge outlasts dynasties' and that 'we clash in our interests but unite in need'. Golphin's 10 Stories Down is a book to read on the stoop, in the park, re-read when it rains or shines, then pass on to a friend for it's wisdom and strident voice.
-- Daniel Kerwick, author of Attach It To Earth, and editor of Simpatico Poets Press