What Can Buddha Teach the Rain?

The mythical T'ang poet Han-shan, placed somewhere between the camps of Daoism and Zen Buddhism and the alleged author of some three hundred poems, probably remains a post-T'ang literary invention - and a good one, it seems, since 'his' poetry is being read, translated and re-translated to this very day. In the present volume, Lars Rasmussen, whose collection of short stories, Come Raw, was published by Serving House Books in 2009, takes up the 900-year old tradition of ascribing newly composed poetry to Han-shan and gives a refreshing guess at what kind of lines the mad hermit would have produced, had he ever been alive. As a further addition to the Han-shan literature, the book also contains a number of homages to the master plus a selection of haiku-like miniature poems and a number of proverbs ascribed to him.