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Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014)
Cover painting by Ann Phong
Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing)
released on June 23, 2014
To purchase a copy of Keeper of the Winds, please go to FootHills Publishing
http://foothillspublishing.com/2014/id83.htm
“At times the poetry of Teresa Mei Chuc can be as haunting as the memories of war. In Keeper of the Winds images explode as if they were landmines. In this book sadness walks hand in hand with violence. What makes Teresa Mei Chuc’s work important is that her poems are personal while speaking for other lives. Her work embraces the earthworm as well as the water buffalo. After tragic events like Fukushima, Teresa Mei Chuc is still capable of dancing with the brown bear; a dance of life’s celebration. When she writes about nature it is always with love. Her poetry is a “spiritual lake” we should cherish and sit close to.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller, author of Fathering Words
"Teresa Mei Chuc's voice on the page--calm and contemplative--lulls the reader who "thinks it's a toy they've found" until the horror of our common histories is manifest and unavoidable. Here is a poet who simultaneously enchants and terrifies. Here is a poet who demands to be read--you won't be disappointed."
—Lynne Thompson, Winner, Perugia Press, Book Award for Beg No Pardon
“These are essential poems, brutally honest, courageous, and clear in their vision, delivered without apology, but with great heart and true soulfulness. Teresa Mei Chuc challenges us to come face-to-face with our history, our real and ever-present world.”
—Sam Hamill, author of Border Songs
INTRODUCTION
The Vietnam War, like all wars, is not over. Farmers in Vietnam are still getting their hands blown off by bombs, their children are playing in fields that are still sewn with death, and the ghostly presence of chemical warfare still kills and deforms people. The clear and devastatingly graceful poems of Vietnamese American poet Teresa Mei Chuc tell these stories and others, most of them haunted by the endless ripples of the violence of war.
Yes, there is violence here, devastation, but these stories are told by a tremendously gifted writer who is acutely aware of the beauty of the world and still strong enough to not look away from the vicious insanity of war. It takes great strength to be calm and completely aware, awake, to try to prevent the pathological somnambulists from destroying everything and yet not become bitter and morose. Teresa Mei Chuc has that strength and combined with a graceful lyrical sense she has created poems of real beauty and terror, a significant achievement.
In poems like “Depleted Uranium” and “the decade the rainforest died,” Chuc’s clear voice explains the horrendous effects of depleted uranium, napalm and Agent Orange on the entire living world, the world of water, plants and people. Other writers have approached these themes of course but part of what sets Chuc’s poetry apart is that precise, poetic vision that while it helps us comprehend the full effects of the devastation through the details of a child’s funeral, it is still infused with grace.
the father carries
the little body
wrapped in a
blanket…
There are coffins
that are only
six inches long. (from “Depleted Uranium”)
It is in the poem “Pencil,” set possibly in Afghanistan, where the poet highlights the vile brutality of the supposedly more humane drone weapons, contrasting the pleasant scene of a little girl walking down the street or a family drinking tea with the image of body parts flying everywhere as a result of a drone strike.
A girl walking down the street
a few steps ahead of her sister and friend…
There is a charred hole in the ground
Where the girl once stood.
However, along with her incisive descriptions of war’s consequences there are celebrations and humor in this collection, too. Chuc’s intimate understanding of the natural world, of insects, birds, butterflies, rainforests comes through in poems such as the sardonic “Evolution: Danaus plexippus plexippus” or the meditative “walking stick”. Her sense of humor comes through nicely in “Names,” evoking her Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry in the descriptions of the sounds in her name.
Teresa Mei Chuc has crafted a wonderful book of poems in Keeper of the Winds, on one hand a passionate indictment of war and on the other a lyrical celebration of the whole world. She is a writer to watch.
Rick Kearns
March 27, 2014
Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing)
released on June 23, 2014
To purchase a copy of Keeper of the Winds, please go to FootHills Publishing
http://foothillspublishing.com/2014/id83.htm
“At times the poetry of Teresa Mei Chuc can be as haunting as the memories of war. In Keeper of the Winds images explode as if they were landmines. In this book sadness walks hand in hand with violence. What makes Teresa Mei Chuc’s work important is that her poems are personal while speaking for other lives. Her work embraces the earthworm as well as the water buffalo. After tragic events like Fukushima, Teresa Mei Chuc is still capable of dancing with the brown bear; a dance of life’s celebration. When she writes about nature it is always with love. Her poetry is a “spiritual lake” we should cherish and sit close to.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller, author of Fathering Words
"Teresa Mei Chuc's voice on the page--calm and contemplative--lulls the reader who "thinks it's a toy they've found" until the horror of our common histories is manifest and unavoidable. Here is a poet who simultaneously enchants and terrifies. Here is a poet who demands to be read--you won't be disappointed."
—Lynne Thompson, Winner, Perugia Press, Book Award for Beg No Pardon
“These are essential poems, brutally honest, courageous, and clear in their vision, delivered without apology, but with great heart and true soulfulness. Teresa Mei Chuc challenges us to come face-to-face with our history, our real and ever-present world.”
—Sam Hamill, author of Border Songs
INTRODUCTION
The Vietnam War, like all wars, is not over. Farmers in Vietnam are still getting their hands blown off by bombs, their children are playing in fields that are still sewn with death, and the ghostly presence of chemical warfare still kills and deforms people. The clear and devastatingly graceful poems of Vietnamese American poet Teresa Mei Chuc tell these stories and others, most of them haunted by the endless ripples of the violence of war.
Yes, there is violence here, devastation, but these stories are told by a tremendously gifted writer who is acutely aware of the beauty of the world and still strong enough to not look away from the vicious insanity of war. It takes great strength to be calm and completely aware, awake, to try to prevent the pathological somnambulists from destroying everything and yet not become bitter and morose. Teresa Mei Chuc has that strength and combined with a graceful lyrical sense she has created poems of real beauty and terror, a significant achievement.
In poems like “Depleted Uranium” and “the decade the rainforest died,” Chuc’s clear voice explains the horrendous effects of depleted uranium, napalm and Agent Orange on the entire living world, the world of water, plants and people. Other writers have approached these themes of course but part of what sets Chuc’s poetry apart is that precise, poetic vision that while it helps us comprehend the full effects of the devastation through the details of a child’s funeral, it is still infused with grace.
the father carries
the little body
wrapped in a
blanket…
There are coffins
that are only
six inches long. (from “Depleted Uranium”)
It is in the poem “Pencil,” set possibly in Afghanistan, where the poet highlights the vile brutality of the supposedly more humane drone weapons, contrasting the pleasant scene of a little girl walking down the street or a family drinking tea with the image of body parts flying everywhere as a result of a drone strike.
A girl walking down the street
a few steps ahead of her sister and friend…
There is a charred hole in the ground
Where the girl once stood.
However, along with her incisive descriptions of war’s consequences there are celebrations and humor in this collection, too. Chuc’s intimate understanding of the natural world, of insects, birds, butterflies, rainforests comes through in poems such as the sardonic “Evolution: Danaus plexippus plexippus” or the meditative “walking stick”. Her sense of humor comes through nicely in “Names,” evoking her Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry in the descriptions of the sounds in her name.
Teresa Mei Chuc has crafted a wonderful book of poems in Keeper of the Winds, on one hand a passionate indictment of war and on the other a lyrical celebration of the whole world. She is a writer to watch.
Rick Kearns
March 27, 2014