A fusion of east and west, high culture, popular culture, and ancient Chinese history mark this collection. It explores the trials of immigration, exile, thwared interracial love, and social injustice, and loss of family.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Chin's concerns for heritage and descent, matched with confrontational rhetoric, seem to make her an old-school poet of Asian-American identity, while a liberal use of autobiographical material (her grandmother, her parents, her neighborhood, her lovers, her English department) positions her speaker as a representative witness to modern, multicultural, middle-class California. This third collection's jagged rhythms and fragmented forms, some based on Chinese poetry and music, others derived from blues and Persian ghazals, thus seem a small-scale syncretism of the personal and political. Chin can tear at familial wounds even while expressing dismay at the limits of tradition: "I, my mother's aging girl/ Myopic, goat-footed// Got snagged on an unmarked trail/ The road diverged; I took/ The one less traveled/ Blah, blah// I sit at her grave for hours...." In other elegies for her mother, and in the at times erotic title poem, Chin approaches the sinewy strength of Adrienne Rich. "Poetry is a vast orphanage in which you and I are stars," "Broken Chord Sequence" says; "One robe, one bowl, silent pilgrimage, the river filled with martyrs." One poem proclaims "The Colonial Language is English"; others promise musical idyll ("Summer Sonatina") or allegory ("The True Story of Mortar and Pestle"). Chin's ambitions can outrun her technique: some poems, especially those in short lines, lack aural or emotional power. Overall, though, this collection's speaker has a strong sense of herself and of her times a sense to which readers of many concerns could respond.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Chin paces the line demarcated by the words Chinese American like a caged tiger, fury just barely held in check one moment, miasma rising dank and poisonous the next. "Blues on Yellow," a wily blues lyric about ethnicity and prejudice, sets the tone for this electrifying collection of protests and laments. Wielded to the axis of anger and reconciliation, Chin's powerful poems hold the knowledge that "there's no life on earth without pain" at their core as they draw everything into their orbit, from ancient Chinese philosophy and folktales to Aretha's hallelujah voice to the murmur of freeways. Impeccable form holds seething emotion as Chin remembers her parents and ponders death, love and aloneness, expectations and failings, exile and abandonment, and the suffering reserved specifically for women. She looks from East to West and back again, restless, critical, poised for flight or fight but persuaded by the muse to hold her ground and find the words for all that boils within and without, all that makes being human so urgent and confounding. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing Plain about this Collection,
By
This review is from: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow: Poems (Hardcover)
Summoning imagery from contemporary life in southern California as well as from ancient China, and places in between, including words and symbols from both languages, Marilyn Chin creates a poetic narrative that is both personal and political. Dwelling on themes of race, history, love and nature, these poems examine the transitory moments of our fragile existence. In "Cauldron," Chin asks: "What is destiny, but an angry wind-plagues and salvages, / death knocking on your neighbor's door, and you dare look out / your window, relieved that you were spared for another hour" (37). In the moments of that hour, with the pages of this book, Chin offers a risky, dynamic collection of poetry, gifts of her particular vision and sensitivity.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
you've got to read it!,
By sistalee (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow: Poems (Paperback)
I've been a fan of Marilyn Chin's poetry for years. She never fails to surprise me with her intelligence, brilliance, craft and daring. She can write everything: blues poems, ballads, long meditations, hymns, political anthems...There's a big beautiful banquet in this book. And, she's funny as hell, but while you're laughing, you realize that the joke is on you, or that she is able to sneak in a life lesson. Not enough room here for all the praise she deserves. Read all her books; you'll be a fan forever.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a marvelous collection!,
By Well Then (Jamaica) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow: Poems (Paperback)
Marilyn Chin's "Rhapsody in Plain Yellow" is a challenging collection that rewards the time and attention it demands. The poems are wide-ranging in their forms and allusions, moving rapidly from ancient China to modern America, from remote history to deeply personal. Her imagery startles you, her word-choice sometimes unsettles you, her humour engages you, her humanity touches you. This is a marvelous collection of poems that I will definitely re-visit.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
