Comic, cosmic: for Kuppner the terms are inseparable. In the three plaited sections of "The Same Life Twice", Frank Kuppner asks the essential, answerless questions about human existence: What are we doing here? Is it really here? And why here? "Fort...

The 501 quatrains of "Second Best Moments in Chinese History" make it seem at first like a repackaged version of Frank Kuppner's celebrated first collection "A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty" (1984). But it isn't: "Please note that this is a completely...