The volume at hand is a very welcome one and will reward many readers for many days of the week.

Reading Anna Yin’s Mirrors and Windows is like viewing the colourful displays of different languages and cultures in the reflection of a mirror, or like watching lively parades on a two-way street from an upstairs window. I have jokingly regarded translation as a demon-revealing mirror. A work that does not possess a universal value, no matter how beautiful it appears or sounds, will show its true color of emptiness under the bright lights of translation. I believe the poems included in Anna’s book, whether they are from the East or the West, have all passed this challenging test.

Anna Yin shows herself to be not only a good translator but a highly skillful and talented translator of poetry. Part of the reason must perforce have to do with her rich experience with writing poetry and her close contact with the authors and their work.

Mirrors and Windows is a wonderful fruit of Anna Yin’s work of years to translate English-language poets into Chinese and contemporary Chinese poets into English. Her insightful choices make the book a stimulating “personal anthology” of recent English poetry, especially valuable for its balance of Canadian poets with those from America and England. As for the modern Chinese poets Yin brings to us, I am grateful to her for her beautiful English renderings of them. In her hands, these poems become a true addition to our own language’s poetry. For me, Mirrors and Windows takes a prominent place on the “contemporary favourites” shelf.

Poetry is not only a mirror to see oneself or a window to see the world but also a bridge, two-way, to actually get to the other side for deeper mutual understanding and communication. What Anna Yin has done, two-way translation, is meaningful not only to herself but to a much broader audience.