Roger and H used to be drinking buddies. Roger could not keep up with H's drinking, because Roger worked as a bus driver and had to work in the morning. The two of them shared an interest in poetry, and they read translations of Chinese poetry together. H gave Roger a present --- a Matthews Chinese-English Dictionary. Roger still carries that dictionary with him.

H translated one hundred Du Fu poems in the early Eighties. This was a hard project because he had no formal training in the Chinese language. He consulted other translations and looked up every word in a dictionary.

He gave Roger a copy of the Du Fu manuscript, which Roger also still has. Roger lent me the manuscript, and I'm enjoying the translations: it is nice to meet Du Fu's voice again in the English of a West Coast poet. (Such an act of bridging seems like a West Coast phenomenon.)

Roger and H lost touch with each other. Roger took a course on Chinese poetry at the University of Washington in the 70s. He attended lectures in the Chinese program, which had been built up by the I CHING scholar Helmut Wilhelm. Roger went back to Evergreen College, then back to Mexico. H's small press started growing into a big publishing business. But their shared interest in Chinese poetry was strong. Roger published a book of Chinese poems in Spanish translation in the mid-Nineties, TINTA CHINA. He did this as a hobby, to relieve his feelings at a time when he was working in Chiapas for an NGO under the U.N. He witnessed some sad things, such as the aftermath of murders by paramilitary squads.

I met H in the early Nineties. I wrote him letters and visited him in Port Townsend. He gave me the impression of a Zen tiger --- someone who might startle you at any time with a remark that makes you look deep in yourself. I tried to persuade him to publish some translated work by Meng Lang and other Chinese poets. (His press had published translations of Tang poets.) But he told me he didn’t know how to market the modern Chinese poets. He had published the Tang poems because he was a Buddhist, and he believed that fellow Buddhists would be interested in their work. But his press concentrated on West Coast American poets.

H knew me from our meeting in the 90s, even though he didn’t publish my translations. Many years later, in spring 2002, H came to the University of Pennsylvania to speak for Poets against the War. He was living out of a suitcase, speaking at a different venue every day for six weeks straight. Meng Lang was my guest at UPenn then, so we went to hear H speak. When H came into the lecture hall he sat down next to Meng and me, and we talked with him for a few minutes. H's host at Penn asked us to join them for dinner, but we had to play host ourselves (to a visiting German sinologist), so we missed that opportunity.

In the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages Dept at Penn I had been feeling isolated. There was a lot of avoidance of discussing the war, and I knew some of my colleagues were pro-war. The atmosphere was tense because we had a Jewish Studies Center and an Arabic Studies Center in one department. Hearing H's lecture was good for me. When I heard H read his poems and speak I felt a sense of belonging in the anti-war movement. I began attending meetings of Delaware County Poets against the War.

I'm glad I recently was able to introduce H to do a reading at Beyond Baroque in L.A. I knew that H would be teaching a workshop in Los Angeles, so I wrote and asked him to contact Richard Modiano of the Valley Poets, and a reading was arranged. H will be reading for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship of L.A.