(…) As a Tibetan born at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Woeser has experienced the full brunt of Chinese imperialism. Her poems of the last decade are driven by an intense sense of urgency, outrage, and grief. Woeser, a devout Buddhist and follower of the Dalai Lama, reveals that her internal world is occupied with aspects of religious experience that not only go to the very core of her identity as a Tibetan but also to a set of spiritual practices by which she understands and knows her own changing self. When one’s country is invaded, the entire fabric of reality is disrupted, and this includes aspects of the internal self. The very act of naming things which are missing becomes an act of resistance, rebellion, and subversion. The Dalai Lama’s physical absence from Tibet is not only symbolic or political, it is also a psychological and spiritual violence of untold proportions because it has affected the hearts of every Tibetan. This poem, “Absent, or Not Absent,” meditates on the resilience of the self as a form of defiance in the face of this scale of violence experienced by Tibetans. (…)