Amazon.com Review
"Lexicon" describes the difficulty of coping gracefully "when they call us oriental" or when they express surprise "when we speak English so well." In the light of cultural misunderstandings, Uyematsu's "rain" symbolizes healing. In the prose poem "Dreaming of Fire on the Night It Rained," society becomes a building inhabited by strangers, near which fires rhythmically break out. The solution is life-giving but limited water, leaving a frightened speaker to "keep / watering the dry dry wood. For now it is all I can do."
Social dictates also affect the personal. In "The Separation," a young son's artistic aspirations begin with his drawing fantastic animals living in a desert he had never before seen. His art ends when "teachers at school / had shown him what real art looks like, / and no matter what I said, he believed them." This "betrayal" confines the boy's artistic imagination to copying rather than creating.
Uyematsu's poems courageously point out the seemingly endless fires of dissent between people--and just as bravely show the possibilities of a forgiving rain to soothe the world.
Review
Asian Zodiac
The Bachelor's Unwritten Letter To Japan
Because The Rhythm Of The Ballad Depends On The Bass
Before Bruce Lee There Was Toshiro Mifune
Belly Breaths
Bone Flute
Border Tallies: Still Climbing Gold Mountain
By A Small River
The Calligrapher
The Christening
Corn Seed
Dreaming Of Fire On The Night It Rained
Early Morning In Midtown
Even After She Leaves
A Father's Story
The Field I Stand Before
Fish
Five Nights Of Rain
Florentino Diaz
Four Haiku (after Talking With David)
Greeting
I Never Hear Myself Sleeping
In A Room Named Shimmer
In America Yellow Is Still An Insult
The Kumquat Seed Dancer
Lessons From Central America
Lexicon
A Long Way From Here
Mother's Day Poem To Myself
Muchas Gracias
Once
Orchid
Out Of Necessity
The Run
The Separation
The Shape Of One Man's Breathing: Saxophone Man
Someone Is Trying To Warn You
Son With Blue Shaven Head
Spring Meal
Storm
Summons
The Ten Million Flames Of Los Angeles
This Shame Called Joy
To Get To The Child
To Talk About A River
To Women Who Sleep Alone
The Well: Imagine A Mountain Whose Name Is Heart
What More
Where The Sky And Ground Are White
Who Have Been Sad Even Before They Could Learn
Wind River
With A Calligrapher
Witness
A Woman Named Matsu/pine
The Woman Who Forgot
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
