Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and lives in New Mexico. She is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including Nest, The Four Year Old Girl, and Empathy.

from Summits Move with the Tide (1974)

Aegean
Perpetual Motion

from Random Possession (1979)

Chronicle
The Reservoir
from The Field for Blue Corn
The Constellation Quilt

from The Heat Bird (1983)

The Heat Bird

from Empathy (1989)

Tan Tien
Chinese Space
Texas
Recitative
Alakanak Break-Up
Fog
Empathy
The Swan
Forms of Politeness
from Honeymoon

from Sphericity (1993)

Ideal

from Endocrinology (1997)

Endocrinology

from Four Year Old Girl (1998)

Irises
Daughter
Health
The Four Year Old Girl
The Doll
Kali

from Nest (2003)

Permanent Home
Dressing Up Our Pets
I Love Morning
Kisses from the Moon
Nest
Hearing
Audience
Safety
Safety
Safety

New Poems

I Love Artists
Concordance
Parallel Lines
Red Quiet

Acknowledgment

Drawing on four decades of work and including new poems published here for the first time, this selection of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's poetry displays the extraordinary luminosity characteristic of her style-its delicate, meticulous observation, great scenic imagination, and unusual degree of comfort with states of indetermination, contingency, and flux.