poetry, 'an auspicious, engaging debut' (M Doty)
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"Adrienne Su's 'Middle Kingdom' is the slippery, hard-to-read territory between languages, cultures, identities a fluid, confusing boundary zone which is both enriching and embattled...Su negotiates the mercurial new world of cultural commingling in witty, formally assured poems often in elegantly accomplished forms which themselves add to the layering of cultural reference. This volume is an auspicious, engaging debut, and its pleasures are especially evident in a signature Su poem, 'In Mexico City,' which delights in a collision of tongues, in the human possibilities conjoined vocabularies reveal." -- Mark Doty
"Is it authentic? Beneath this question rests a garden in all its tended beauty. This is the plot of Adrienne Su, who raises a voice of calm and subtle strength in her evocation of a new land, stretching from China to suburban Virginia, across class and race divides, defining these States, homing in on the poem. Here there is no doubt: Ms. Su is the real thing, an authentic poet who lifts the craft into orbit, gives a readout that inexorably relaxes us humans into being. That's the poem's home, the Middle Kingdom, where Adrienne Su lives, writes, and tends the garden." -- Bob Holman
1978
Address
An Afternoon In The Park
Antidepressant
At Seven I Mistake A Documentary On The Internment Camps
The Bride
China
Claiming The Find
Dog Winter
Eighteen-year-old Biography
Elegy
The Emperor's Second Wife
Four Sonnets About Food
Francine, 1949
Hitchhikers
Home
Illumination
In Mexico City
Men
Miss Chang Is Missing
My House In The Suburbs
Piranex
Savannah Crabs
Shanghai '87
Translation
Under The Window
Visitation
The Word Was My First Companion
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
Here is a fresh and profound voice heralding in new cultural bridges in poetry. With such dynamic, fluid, and fantastically readable poems, this reviewer plowed straight through this too short collection with a sense of being informed. . . The rhyme is irregular, but virtually seamless and the cadences and narratives carry one forward, through each line, verse, and page, in a controlled fall. One comes away with a sense of having been intimate with the poet as a family historian. Su is strongest in the fourth section "Middle Kingdoms," in which she creates her fullest and most inhabitable poetry. Admittedly, a knowledge of Chinese culture and language is helpful, though the neophyte is by no means excluded. Still young, she is a poet to watch and read eagerly in the future. -- Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 74, No. 2
Su is more than just an astute observer of cultural boundaries; she is also quite a graceful narrative poet, at times on the edge of lyricism. Throughout the collection, she makes clever use of forms such as the sonnet and the sestina, employing words and images with subtlety and a frequently internalized rhyme. This sensitivity to language in both its cultural and its artistic aspects, combined with Su's elegant blending of east/west subjects, makes this volume a middle kingdom worth visiting. -- Zarina Mullan Plath, WGLT-FM, Normal, IL
"Is it authentic? Beneath this question rests a garden in all its tended beauty. This is the plot of Adrienne Su, who raises a voice of calm and subtle strength in her evocation of a new land, stretching from China to suburban Virginia, across class and race divides, defining these States, homing in on the poem. Here there is no doubt: Ms. Su is the real thing, an authentic poet who lifts the craft into orbit, gives a readout that inexorably relaxes us humans into being. That's the poem's home, the Middle Kingdom, where Adrienne Su lives, writes, and tends the garden." -- Bob Holman
1978
Address
An Afternoon In The Park
Antidepressant
At Seven I Mistake A Documentary On The Internment Camps
The Bride
China
Claiming The Find
Dog Winter
Eighteen-year-old Biography
Elegy
The Emperor's Second Wife
Four Sonnets About Food
Francine, 1949
Hitchhikers
Home
Illumination
In Mexico City
Men
Miss Chang Is Missing
My House In The Suburbs
Piranex
Savannah Crabs
Shanghai '87
Translation
Under The Window
Visitation
The Word Was My First Companion
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
Here is a fresh and profound voice heralding in new cultural bridges in poetry. With such dynamic, fluid, and fantastically readable poems, this reviewer plowed straight through this too short collection with a sense of being informed. . . The rhyme is irregular, but virtually seamless and the cadences and narratives carry one forward, through each line, verse, and page, in a controlled fall. One comes away with a sense of having been intimate with the poet as a family historian. Su is strongest in the fourth section "Middle Kingdoms," in which she creates her fullest and most inhabitable poetry. Admittedly, a knowledge of Chinese culture and language is helpful, though the neophyte is by no means excluded. Still young, she is a poet to watch and read eagerly in the future. -- Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 74, No. 2
Su is more than just an astute observer of cultural boundaries; she is also quite a graceful narrative poet, at times on the edge of lyricism. Throughout the collection, she makes clever use of forms such as the sonnet and the sestina, employing words and images with subtlety and a frequently internalized rhyme. This sensitivity to language in both its cultural and its artistic aspects, combined with Su's elegant blending of east/west subjects, makes this volume a middle kingdom worth visiting. -- Zarina Mullan Plath, WGLT-FM, Normal, IL
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Adrienne Su's Middle Kingdom,
By Bryan Thao Worra (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Middle Kingdom (Paperback)
The Middle Kingdom is a wonderful debut from a very talented writer whose poetry truly shines amid what has been passing for poetry in the community these days. Literate, witty and entertaining, her work remains tremendously accessible and inspiring for other modern poets to aspire to. There's a lot going on here in such a slender volume, and it's well worth picking up.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Middle Kingdom" is "witty, elegantly accomplished.",
By A Customer
This review is from: Middle Kingdom (Paperback)
Mark Doty says the poems in "Middle Kingdom" are "witty, formally assured...elegantly accomplished...an auspicious, engaging debut." He's right--this is a dynamite first book, each poem a polished gem. Adrienne Su is bound to become one of America's premier poets.
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful book,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Middle Kingdom (Paperback)
Stumbled on this collection and author by pure chance. Poetic perfection is impossible to attain but this book comes close. Thank you, Adrienne Su.
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