Employing some of the link-and-shift techniques of the Japanese renku, these poems repeatedly allude to -major themes in Ecclesiastes, while speaking, under the influence of the Buddhist "Heart Sutra," to the hunger for perfection or the desire to forestall change that keeps us attached to the world. Weather serves as a metaphor for our headlong fall into aging and death.

Debra Kang Dean has published two collections of poetry: Back to Back (NCWN, 1997), which won the Harperprints Poetry Chapbook Competition; and News of Home (BOA, 1998), which won the New England Poetry Club's Sheila Margaret Motton Award. A contributing editor for Tar River Poetry, she lives in West Peterborough, New Hampshire, with her husband Brad and two cats.