Poetry has long fascinated former Star Tribune editorial board member Jim Lenfestey, both as a reader and a writer. Back in 1970 a bookseller gave him a collection of poems by Han Shan, or Cold Mountain, a Chinese poet who lived 1400 years ago.
Lenfestey fell in love with the poems, and remarkably found himself still reading them decades later. Lenfestey's new book "Seeking the Cave" is a memoir about how his love of Han Shan's work turned into a journey halfway around the world seeking the cave where legend says the poet lived.
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SPEAKER: Writer Jim Lenfestey has traveled many paths over the years. He's been a journalist, a teacher, and also served on the editorial board of the Star Tribune. But for most, he sees himself as a poet. Euan Kerr report said Lenfestey didn't realize until recently that he is a poet in search of something.
EUAN KERR: If a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, then Jim Lenfestey took that step in a bookstore back in 1970. He says the owner knew him well.
JIM LENFESTEY: One day, I walked in there, and he handed me this book. He said, here, try these. And he handed it to me like a doctor giving a prescription to a patient.
EUAN KERR: It was a collection of poems by the Chinese poet Han Shan, who is said to have lived in a cave.
JIM LENFESTEY: All we know about this character was that he wrote some 300 poems. He painted them on rocks and walls and carved them on trees about 1,200 years ago in the Tang Dynasty of China.
EUAN KERR: The poem survived thanks to a local government official. He liked them and copied them down. It was modern translations of those ancient works that Lenfestey held in his hand.
JIM LENFESTEY: Well, I fell in love.
EUAN KERR: Not only did he read the poems to himself, he read them to friends, students, anyone who would listen.
JIM LENFESTEY: But here's the thing, that was 1970. So, in 2005, I'm still reading them. This has never happened to me. I think this happens to everybody. There's one artist or there's one sculptor, there's one painter, there's one author that seems to speak to them in a way they don't understand. And this was the case for me.
EUAN KERR: He recites one of his favorites.
JIM LENFESTEY: "Here we languish, a bunch of poor scholars, ravaged by extremes of hunger and cold. Out of work, our only joy is poetry. Scribble, scribble, we wear out our brains. Who will read the works of such men? On that point you can save your sighs. We could inscribe our poems on biscuits, and homeless dogs wouldn't deign to nibble."
[LAUGHS]
EUAN KERR: Jim Lenfestey describes the poem as a 1,200-year-old joke.
JIM LENFESTEY: But it's also, it turns out, the most wonderful tonic for a writer.
EUAN KERR: A writer who wonders if a word they write will ever be read.
JIM LENFESTEY: I recite that poem all the time to people saying, take heart. Here's a guy complaining about nothing going on for literature 1,200 years ago. And here I am 1,200 years later, reciting it to you.
EUAN KERR: It was this ongoing fascination with Han Shan which ultimately led Lenfestey to go on a literary pilgrimage, to try to find the cave where the poet lived.
JIM LENFESTEY: This was a deep response to a deep call that I couldn't understand and I had to pursue. And so it led me not only to the specific cave in China and to around China, but it led me into a whole study of a culture and many, many more things that deepened and deepened and deepened. And then, of course, it led me to help me understand more about myself.
EUAN KERR: Jim Lenfestey has chronicled what happened in a new book called Seeking the Cave. He'll launch it tonight at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis at 7:00 PM. The book is a memoir of the trip, but also contains poems Lenfestey wrote inspired by the journey. It's taken him seven years since he returned from China to sort through everything. He reads one of the poems.
JIM LENFESTEY: "I have traveled enough in this world. I have heard the eternal cicadas song. Language is the temple, the court, the heart. Now wherever I travel, there I am. When I sit, my mind sits too. When I dance, the air around me dances. When I die, I feed the earth that fed me."
EUAN KERR: It's beautiful.
JIM LENFESTEY: Thank you. Even though I missed a word.
[LAUGHING]
EUAN KERR: I didn't notice.
JIM LENFESTEY: "When I dance, the air around me whirls."
EUAN KERR: Jim Lenfestey says after traveling thousands of miles, he's come to a realization Seeking the Cave was both a literal and a metaphorical journey. And he believes he's discovered himself. Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio News.
SPEAKER: And you can hear Jim reading the prologue to Seeking the Cave at mprnews.org.