Teresa Mei Chuc (Chúc Mỹ Tuệ )
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Brigit Pegeen Kelly

4/24/2010

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I am currently reading To the Place of Trumpets by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, her first poetry book. I was going to buy it so that I would have her whole collection. I currently have Song (her second poetry book) and Orchard (her third poetry book). Both incredible books. To my surprise, To the Place of Trumpets costs over $100; it must be a collector's item now. So, I checked it out from the Elliot Pratt Library and conscientiously turn the pages gently.

Here is a poem from the book (I was not able to do some indentations correctly in the first part due to formatting problems):

Those Who Wrestle with the Angel for Us

i. 
My brother flies
A plane,
windhover, night-lover,
Flies too low
Over the belled
and furrowed fields,
The coiled creeks,
The slow streams of cars
spilling
Like lust into the summer
Towns. And he flies
when he
Should not, when
The hot, heavy air
breaks
In storms, in high
Winds, when the clouds
like trees
Unload their stony fruit
And batter his slender
wings and tail.
But like the magician's
Dove, he appears home safely
every time,
Carrying in his worn white
Bag all the dark
elements
That flight knows,
The dark that makes
his own soul
Dark with sight.

ii.
Even when he was a child, his skin was the white

Of something buffed by winds at high altitudes

Or lit by arctic lights--it gleamed like fish scales
Or oiled tin, and even then he wished to be alone,

Disappearing into the long grasses of the Ipperwash dunes
Where the gulls nested and where one afternoon

He fell asleep and was almost carried off by the sun--
In his dream he was running, leaping well, leaping

High as the hunted deer, and almost leaping free,
But like the tide, my gentle-handed mother hauled him back

With cold compresses and tea, and after that he favored
The dark, the ghostly hours, a small boy whistling in our yard

As he dragged a stick along the fence rails, and listened
To the slatted rattle of railroad cars, and knew by

Instinct how railroad lines look from the air, like ladders
Running northward to the stars, to the great constellations.

And he began then tracking his way through the names
Of all our fears, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the shining Ram,

Tracking the miles and years he logs now, the lonely stretches
Where he finds the souvenirs that light our narrow kitchens--

Buckles and pins, watches and rings--the booty
That makes our land-locked, land-bound souls feel the compass

In our feet, and see in those who never speak, who
Slouch in with the dust of the northern wind on their backs,

The face of the angel we ourselves must wrestle with.

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Victoria Chang

4/10/2010

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One of my favorite poets, Victoria Chang, had a reading today at UC Irvine. Unfortunately, I missed it. I have to make it to one of her readings someday, especially since I'm about an hour drive away. I love both of her books, Circle and Salvinia Molesta. Here is one of the first poems I read by her:

Ars Poetica as Birdfeeder and Hummingbird

All winter I watched the empty feeder
and the God light pummel

its stained glass in a sieve.  No
hummingbirds, no

humorous little body with a tent stake
as a nose.

Look, little bird, how do you know, how
do you know

your brilliance is what I seek? The way
you lance a honeysuckle's

heart, take the blood in your bill. I wish
I knew how to punch

a center, inch in and in, lance something
to death, that flowers and

flowers light. You in your array of vibrating
attire. I am not

a weed, I need your praise to survive.
The field will consume me.

The field has chosen sides. The field is
not hungry for the middling.

How I hate the field and what it sees, its
teeth digging out the ochre 

of mediocre, what's left but medi-a non, 
a nothing, no-one.

O tiny bird- medicate me, convulse me,
punch holes in me so

some of my light leaks out.



Victoria Chang's website:
http://www.victoriamchang.com/
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The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck

4/1/2010

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When I first read The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, I was floored. I had never read anything like it before. The poems come together to create counterpoint. The harmonically interdependent voices in Gluck's poems in this book become the deliberate silence, “the unsaid…[that] exerts great power.” It is a depressing book, but her poems emerge from the underworld, re-investing the world with meaning.  

Here is a poem from the book:

WITCHGRASS

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder -

If you hate me so much
don't bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything-

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
one enemy-

I'm not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can't rest until
you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion-

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don't need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I'll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.
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    Teresa Mei Chuc is a writer of poetry and creative non-fiction.

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