Burnt Offerings [Paperback]

Timothy Liu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1995

second volume of poems by Liu

Editorial Reviews

Review

Across The River
Apostasy
Apostasy
Benediction
Breughel
Celan
Chatham
Echoes
Forty-percent Chance Of Rain
A Grave
Highway 6
I Came
Ikon
In The Outhouse
Invocation
Manifest Destiny
The Marriage
Men Without
Naked
Nude Figure Dancing I The Foreground
Poem
Reading Whitman In A Toilet Stall
Rest Stop, Highway 91
The Road To Seder
She Smashes Dishes
The Size Of It
Sunday
Survivors
Thoreau
Wellfleet
White Moths
Winter
With Chaos In Each Kiss
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Many of the poems in Liu's second collection bristle with sexual candor, but it isn't the blunt telling of interludes held in an outhouse, in a public washroom, or even the one in an 18-wheeler that makes this work remarkable. Scenes like these are not unfamiliar; there is a genre devoted to them. What distinguishes this poetry is Liu's deft handling of the graphic material, his skillful and taut braiding of it with an artful imagery and transcendent lyricism. Unsurprisingly, he's at his best when wrestling sexuality and the folly it engenders, when pinning down the animal half in well-wrought stanzas and subtle, soothing music. The effort ultimately leads to the meditative and dearly earned melancholy of one who would ask: "How have I become/this man who fell in love/with less and less?" We value the brutal insofar as it makes a book tender as this.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 84 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556591047
• ISBN-13: 978-1556591044
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,036,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bold but gentle poetic voice, June 9, 2002

By 

Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burnt Offerings (Paperback)

I first encountered one of Timothy Liu's poems in an anthology, and was impressed enough to seek out further work of his. "Burnt Offerings" is a collection of his poetry. A significant part of the book reflects a gay Asian male perspective. There are a number of religious references and allusions, and a number of graphic evocations of gay sex.

The book is dominated by two longer poems, "With Chaos in Each Kiss" (13 pages long) and "Naked" (10 pages); these are tender, sad poems about the aftermath of a relationship between the speaker and a musician. I was intrigued by Liu's yoking of the motifs of performing arts and love. These two poems really read like they were written by someone who has been there and experienced such love and loss.

... Also noteworthy is "The Size of It," a poem about body image, homosexuality, and Asian male identity; this poem has a flavor of painful honesty.

Even when at his most graphic and in-your-face, Liu writes with a poetic voice that is appealingly tender and gentle. I love his line, "Only love can make us visible" (from "With Chaos in Each Kiss"). Liu is definitely a poet worth exploring, and his work is a valuable contribution to American poetry, gay literature, and Asian-American literature. For an interesting complementary text, try Allen Ginsberg's "Cosmopolitan Greetings."