This work is a Poetry Book Society recommended translation. "Forms of Distance" is Bei Dao's second bilingual collection since his enforced exile from China in 1989. Michael Hofmann described the first, "Old Snow", as 'the work of one of the great poets of our time', and John Cayley wrote in the "Times Literary Supplement" that 'in a sense he is the only contemporary Chinese poet who is knowable for the non-specialist...we can hear the maturing poetic voice of a highly talented, individual Chinese writer.'