a dim sum of the day before. Temple, TX: Ink Brush Press, 2010. isbn 9780982440568. The 52 lyric poems gathered in A Dim Sum of the Day Before were all written in southern and southwestern China during 2008. The south and the southwest have a long history on the edge, and these poems embrace it, beginning with a confusion of maos: “Speakers of putonghua never mistake / the late Chairman for a cat, but I do / so often with joy, delighted / that every cat I meet on the street / could be his ghost wondering / how on earth it came to this.” While maos wonder, birds “tap dance / on the translucent roof” and “mayflies chant / there can be no pleasure / where there is no danger.” When the Olympic torch passes far from Beijing “every person / who stops on the street / for a photo to prove / he was here stands / under a flag.” Sticky flags the crowd wears end up on the walk, where “in the end women on their knees / scrape remnants off paving stones / so no one will walk on the flag without thinking.” After the Sichuan earthquake, trees “can’t resist a confetti shower / after rain. They scatter // yellow rainbows where / we walk, remember / the dead but dance for // the living, shower / each going on / with flowers.” And, from this edge, on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the poet watches “States / line up living Buddhas / like barricades, tip them // like buses in burning streets, check / body counts, silence what is / out of line, contain // slow burns off stage so / nobody shouts fire until / all that is left is ashes.” Celebrating the year of the rat in a “city rising, // like a single moment dancing in the clearing / of a truce negotiated on some battlefield,” these poems invite readers to come to China “for the light, gray / soft through everyday / fog,” point to a sign that cautions “a little heart / with your head,” think Mapfumo while Tuku sings “I’m feeling low,” sip Yunnan coffee in a shop named Salvador, “dream / a failed revolution in our own exile.” [Review by Reid Mitchell in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, September 2010] | [Review by Ben Myers in This is just to Say, May 2011] | order from an independent bookstore.
lyrical abstraction in painting and poetry