Stitching Porcelain: After Matteo Ricci in Sixteenth-Century China

Stitching Porcelain, Deborah Larsen's first book of poetry, is a narrative-lyric sequence based on the life of Matteo Ricci, the resourceful Jesuit who entered China in 1583 and stayed for a quarter century. Pondering cultural accommodation as well as faith, many of the poems center on actual events: Ricci's dressing as a Buddhist; his awe-inspiring map (with China shrewdly centered); his prostration before an empty Dragon Throne. Other events the poet imagined. (In the title room, Ricci addresses a love lyric to China: "Your porcelain is so fine, so thin,/a brass wire can repair it . . . /Once I saw you beneath the bamboo/ . . . bent back/from the world, stitching porcelain.") With a felicity rare in a debut volume, Larsen's opalescent poetry works in perfect counterpoint to the strange and brilliant Ricci.

Arrived At Nanking
At The Equator On Board The Carrack St. Louis
Blue Lights
A Captain In His Pride: 1578
Changing Clothes: From Buddhist To Mandarin
The Haft: Ricci In Thought
Hearing Confession
In The Fast Boat From Nanking: Prolepsis
Looking At The Empty Dragon Throne
The Loss Of Joao Barradas To The River Gan
Mandarin
The Map
A Natural History
New Litany For The Disguised Brother Benedetto De Gois
On Hearing Of Matteo Ricci's Death: Rescued Consort's Song
The Plateau
Recalling Former Travels #4
The Ruined Concubine: Complaint Against The Jesuit Ricci
Seals
Stitching Porcelain
Under A Brown Sail. Macao To Canton: 1583
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®