Yang Lian is one of the most astonishing poets I've read for years. He has a westernist, modernist sensibility allied with an ancient Chinese, almost shamanistic one. He can both excite and frighten you – like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!
- W.N. Herbert, The Scotsman
He continues his work bridging Chinese tradition to western modernism. The scope of his creative imagination is astounding …Yang Lian is one of the great world poets of our era.
- Klaus Rifberg, Edinburgh Review
It wouldn’t surprise me if he became a future Nobel Laureate. His style is one of extraordinary grandeur and ambition… Without question, the sequence Where the Sea Stands Still has a monumental drive, a sensuous strength and intellectual clarity; it could prove as enduring an achievement as Montale’s Xenia or Elytis’s The Axion Esti.
- David Morley, Stand