In it, Wiman looks back on the violence that marked both his childhood in West Texas and his family's history, and seems to gather that his past made his writing career inevitable. His conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive, because when he first began reading poetry, in college, he believed that "it had absolutely nothing to do with the world I was from." But he no longer believes that assumption was entirely accurate.
The Frank O'Hara poem "Katy" features seven lines of self-assessing declarations. It is the fifth line that I get the most mileage out of: "I am never quiet, I mean silent." When I am teaching writing workshops, specifically with young writers, teen-agers who-in many cases-have not let their sense of wonder be battered by waves of irony or cynicism, I ask them what distinctions they see between "quiet" and "silent."
Located at the foot of Nankun Mountain in Huizhou, Guangdong, Half-Mountain Cloud Station serves as a key node in the 'Two-Mountain Architectural Art Program'. The project is inspired by Su Dongpo's 'Sixteen Joys of Life in Huizhou', specifically the verse 'viewing mountains after rain from a tower'. It responds poetically to tensions between city and nature, memory and future.