Wendy Xu: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Must Change My Form

 

It’s true, nothing is coming out like it used to anymore

Usually I am rather neat and tidy in my work

It is spring, that time of year when all rain is expired cherry blossoms, the ground pink like above us, more pink

Walking through the park with my love I think about Chang-e, goddess of the moon, her exquisitely timed appearances at my moments of deepest need

I’m so tired of the compromises of women in my cultural folklore, as if: sacrifice is defensible as a feminist vision?

For example:

Your husband is greedy and demands ever greater production of silk from you, plucked from your own tender skin, spun overnight to meet his needs

Your husband is hoarding the immortality pills and so now you must live on the moon

Your husband loves you even in your true form, an enormous white snake, but he dies because you’re pregnant

Your husband is a dick, generally, and the other details are fluid

Thank god you are beautiful and a wonder to be regarded from earth

GuanYin remains the champion of mercy except in her punitive dealings with men

As a child I admired her for being above all helpful in my limited aspirations, perhaps I only aspired to that much, to function with use

Do you have context for this legend? Shall I include it here for you?

If I do, who is my perceived audience?

Some of you are my brothers and sisters and I allow you your infinite transgressions

My father writes me:

I just read your new poem NOTES FOR AN OPENING, it makes me think a lot, feel a lot, a lot about my life and our life. It will make me think and feel much more and more about myself and my children and the relatedness of our life in the true meaning of living or simply being alive. I love you Wendy, my daughter. Keep writing it. Let the thoughts flow whenever they come in your poetic form or other forms. Please ask if you need anything from me. I have been thinking a lot lately about our life journey. Nothing is better than writing it out and fully express it although it is really hard to re-experience many things.

Note: punctuation and grammar have been corrected

As per: your convenience

 

Do as much as you can as best as you can

I think about the wonderful hyphen, the place where I am allowed to live and am never followed

Blank Hyphen American

The hurt is the bridge, the bind, the unnatural (Hyper Hyphen Natural) adjoining my frankenparts

A grammar joke is: “Chinese-American” privileges the “Chinese” over the “American”

Get it?

I wish my life were so good that I was frequently bored

“A fatal sickness”

Which is despair but despair does not equal death, so what is unto death?

I am so glad I did not have to love him unto death, though I love him there

All good things must end and give rise to still undetermined things

If I despair of it I am sick with it, an already dead attitude, a levity I no longer feel

I am sick with love for my immigrant parents, the long mirror they hold out towards me

The poem will have no annotation, no disclosure, no burden, no qualifying exam, no end

It will be all language prerequisite

You might focus then on my sickness and use it to betray me

You might have no time no money no inner resources with which to begin

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Wendy Xu’s most recent books of poetry are The Past (2021) and Phrasis (2017), named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Granta, Poetry, New York Review of Books, Tin House, and widely elsewhere. She is assistant professor of writing at The New School, where she teaches poetry.

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   Panel with the Moon Goddess and Attendants. 12th–13th century China.  Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ornate style of clothing worn by these four women suggests they are immortals. The osmanthus leaf held by the largest figure, at the right, identifies her as the Moon Goddess Chang’e, who inhabits her celestial palace along with a rabbit that prepares the elixir of long life.

Comments

[clarinda]

There's a lot of poetry by people whose family were immigrants to the US--and some of them are unbearably preachy tho doubtless heartfelt. This poem dares to be funny as well as fierce! I love it. (I love the illustration too.)

[Jack Skelley]

Love it! Fluid! Love the illustration too...

[lally]

wow

[Don Berger]

What a huge pleasure to track the movement, strength, and variability of cadences in these lines, and to recognize the intelligence in Wendy Xu's coverage of her worlds. A colossal, ultra-worthy pick-of-the-week!

[Terence Winch]

Clarinda: great comment. Thanks.

[Terence Winch]

Jack: Thanks for the comment. Glad you liked it.

[Terence Winch]

Prof. Berger: thanks for this comment.

[Denise Duhamel]

Brilliant! I love the way this poem moves and the funny/bold/heartbreaking statements it asserts.

[John Clarke]

Terrific poem! I love its deceptively precise meanderings. GuanYin guides its merciless mercy.

[Grace Cavalieri Flynn]

Courageous and bold poetry. As Bob Hicok says, "The only risk is not taking a chance."

[Geoffrey Himes]

First we're in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, then we're in a calligraphic scroll, then we're in a gmail inbox, then we're in a coffeehouse talking about punctuation, and each jump is disorienting then rewarding, funny and sad as only irony can be.

[Susan Francis Campbell]

terrific poem and visuals!

[matthew rohrer]

Wendy you rock as always. Thank you for this.

[Peter Kearney]

The goddesses Chang-e and GuanYin helped our author, but it is not clear that they used language. She is deeply affected by her immigrant parents, but they do not speak, but rather extend to her a long mirror. Do we need to let this brilliantly creative poet speak to us apart from language and let the poem be just what she says it is: language prerequisite?

[Eileen]

Great poem.

[T. Devaney]

Great! “The poem will have no annotation, no disclosure, no burden, no qualifying exam, no end”

[Robert McDowell]

Engaging, experimental writing that playfully, willfully, punatively pushes the envelope. Their are so many delicious one-and-two-line zingers in this writing. In many ways, in intention, it reminds me of Virginia Woolf's last novel, Between the Acts, in which Woolf was determined to erase barriers between fiction and poetry. VW succeeded. That's what Wendy Xu does in this poem.

[Jeffrey Cyphers Wright]

The "long mirror." What a great metaphor for poetry itself and in a larger sense, our search for meaning. The ancient wisdom slips into something comfortable and au courant. The bass notes stand up among the trills and thrills. We feel at home here, but in elegant, surprising ways. Great concept and momentum. Brava!

[Linda Hickman]

I love it. It makes me think of Quan Yin differently. Lots of wonderful visual imagery.