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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
Grateful to receive a letter on June 1, 2021 from a 10th grade student in Massachusetts in response to my poem, “Rainforest” (first published in miller’s pond, 2009). This letter gives me so much hope for the future of this planet. "Rainforest" appears in my poetry collection, Keeper of the Winds.
Dear Teresa Mei Chuc,
...This past week I read your poem “Rainforest” in my tenth grade English class, during our poetry unit.
While I was reading, a line that really stuck out for me was, “But perhaps this earth is for them already a cemetery—stacks and stacks of flesh on a desk. Which one belongs to which tree?” These lines have such a strong meaning. I love how the “stacks and stacks of flesh on a desk” is a metaphor comparing dead trees to dead bodies. It really makes you realize that we are not killing an object. We are killing an actual living thing that has been alive for hundreds of years.
After reading about your life a little bit, I found out that you were born in Saigon after the American war in Vietnam and that your father had supported the US-backed regime in South Vietnam, and was imprisoned in a re-education camp after the war. I also learned that growing up, you were taught to appreciate living things including trees, rocks, rivers, oceans and that everything in essence was living. My life might be different from yours, but I also relate with appreciating living things. I live in the woods and I love to hear the birds chirping in the morning and the peepers during the night. I love the smell of spring and watching the leaves slowly come out and the rustling of the leaves on a windy day.
I definitely related to the idea that what we are doing to our rainforests and even our normal forests is wrong. You captured this perfectly in the lines “I close my eyes so that I can see it. What we so freely eliminate.” and “Already, we’ve traded oxygen for so much.” I hate how we are cutting down living things that have been alive for hundreds, even thousands of years in just a couple of seconds. I feel like we are destroying our world. We are cutting down something that is mandatory for our survival for something that we throw away after we use it. I’ve driven on a road everyday for 9 years, and every year more and more trees are getting cut down. Places that used to have huge pine trees now just have stumps.
After reading the poem I went back to the first lines. “I close my eyes so that I can see it. What we so freely eliminate.” I think the meaning of these lines is that in the future, all of the rainforests will be gone, so if we want to see it, we have to close our eyes and imagine what it used to look like. What’s sad is that at this pace, it will probably happen. My children or grandchildren might have to hear stories or look at old photos to see what a rainforest looks like because they’ll all be gone. But it isn’t just the trees that are in danger, it's also the animals. When the trees go, so do the animals. My kids or grandkids may not know what a jaguar is. They may not know what an orangutan is. We must stop cutting down the rainforest for paper that we waste and throw away.
I feel like this poem captures the thoughts of everybody that is against logging. We care about the beauty of nature instead of thinking of how much money we can make from it. We understand that we are killing ourselves by getting rid of the only thing on the Earth that gives us precious oxygen. We don’t see tree stumps just as stumps, but as headstones saying “here stood a majestic tree that was here for hundreds of years but has had its life ripped away.”
What I also love about your poem is just how powerful it is. I’ve learned about logging from my science class, and I’ve seen things about it on the news, but just reading a poem about it makes it feel so much more important that we stop this. I think if anybody read this poem, even if they didn’t care about trees, they would stop to think about what is happening to the rainforests, and might start actually caring about trees. These metaphors are so powerful they could convert anybody.
Thank you so much for writing this poem,
Grateful to receive another letter on May 25, 2022 from a 10th grade student in Massachusetts in response to my poem, “Rainforest” (first published in miller’s pond, 2009).
Dear Teresa Mei Chuc,
I read your poem as an assignment in my Literature, Writing, & Public Speaking class. At first, I chose your poem “Rainforest,” because it was short and easy to read. However, I was intrigued by the beauty in it; it’s short and straightforward. I knew exactly what your poem was about.
Although current problems such as human rights are as important as the earth under us, humankind grows more hateful, blinding the eyes of the top predators on earth, us. Forgetting what is dying underneath us every day is easy. I was one of those people until I saw your poem and remembered what we’re killing every day. I was blind.
I feel as though most of us have forgotten what pollution, climate change, deforestation, littering, or recycling are. We’ve been so busy looking out for each other, that we’ve forgotten to take care of the planet we’re standing on.
Please don’t take this in the wrong way, but I’m not sure whether or not your poem was supposed to make the readers feel guilty (pretty sure it’s supposed to, since the word guilty appeared in the poem, and as well as implied multiple times), but it sure did make me feel guilty. I feel guilty having to carry parts of processed thin pieces of trees (paper) in my backpack, using paper every day, and even touching books. But because of that guilt, your poem is so beautiful. It’s a straightforward way of saying, “Hey! Don’t you realize we are all guilty of murdering our planet in one way or another?” It made me want to make changes in how I live.
The line “Already, we’ve traded oxygen for so much” made me think of this guilt because trees are one of the many primary sources of our oxygen. Fun fact that you may have already known: One large tree can supply up to four people with oxygen.
Another line I liked was, “They say the dead that did not die a peaceful death are doomed forever to wander the earth.” This kind of belief has been found in many mythologies and religions, such as Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese which I love studying in my free time. Egyptians believed that mummification was necessary for mortals who wanted to cross over to the afterlife. As Greeks believed to give the dead coins in order for them to pay for the boatman to take them across the river. While the Chinese believed that in order for the dead to die peacefully, they need to bury the deceased person with items and artifacts that they owned so their soul will be comforted in the afterlife.
When you wrote “But perhaps this earth is for them already a cemetery,” I thought it was one of the saddest parts of the poem because it’s like staying in a place where your trauma formed, somewhere you don’t want to be in but can’t go anywhere else, their souls are stuck in place, watching their race being cut down.
Because plants can feel as much as us, or any other animals on this planet. So I imagined a peaceful afterlife for the trees, whenever a tree is cut down, in the afterlife they wake up as giants that roam the earth, not big, huge giants, but a tree giant that is three to four stories tall. Anyways, they roam the earth as tree ghosts, looking down and spectating our lives. They’ll see Climate Change protests, and finally see peace in the world...
Thank you for writing this beautiful poem and for all of your hard work,
