"In many ways ours is the Age of Narcissism, to which Poetry haplessly, for better or worse, holds up the mirror of Narcissus in crisis; self-love, self-absorption, the infantile I-my-me-itis, outsize trinkets of self-harm & self-adornment; infinite regression or righteous indignation, the welter of identity poetry. Translating Tang poetry afforded some relief; its regard for nature imparts not quietism, but a consciousness without the self, delineating some lost mode of being. " Wong May Carcanet