Cover
Click image to order
Never miss a post
Your email address:*
Name: 
Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries

Categories

« "Male Stargazing" [by Jim Cummins] | Main | To Independence (Steve McQueen) and some prose in favor of peace [by David Lehman] »

July 03, 2022

Comments

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.)

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

wow

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!


Clarinda: great comment. Thanks.


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


Prof. Berger: thanks for this comment.

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

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

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

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.

terrific poem and visuals!

Wendy you rock as always. Thank you for this.

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?

Great poem.

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

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.

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!

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

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Cover
click image to order your copy
That Ship Has Sailed
Click image to order
BAP ad
Cover
"Lively and affectionate" Publishers Weekly

Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark


from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman

StatCounter

  • StatCounter