Things That No Longer Delight Me (Poets Out Loud) [Paperback]

Leslie C. Chang (Author), Cornelius Eady (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2010 | Series: Poets Out Loud

Things That No Longer Delight Me is a collection of poems about family and memory. This book is filled with objects. The author writes:I like objects for company,to decorate the plainest spaces, decorumandI amass details, jade bracelet, her animal-printdresses, an oval coral cameo.How do objects counter loneliness, she asks, and speak to us of how to behave?In Things That No Longer Delight Me, lyric is driven by a compulsion or need to collect, in order to make sense of the past and stay connected to it.And what if that connection were to be lost? Confronting loss, the book pieces together a family history from stories fragmented and overheard. It asks: What is hearsay and what is history? It seeks to embody story, or historical detail, in lyric form. Resisting nostalgia, its poems respect what is diminished by grief or loss yet reveal details that hold sway over us and give us continuing pleasure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

I will always be fascinated, Chang writes, by details from my grandmother's childhood. The verse and fragmentary prose of this debut describe her family's life in prerevolutionary mainland China and in Hong Kong. Many short poems react to heirlooms, to oral traditions, and photographs; in a concluding sequence set in the present day, the poet shadows her mother and grandmother returning/ to China... ravenous, as if poised/ on a threshold, each street stall a Kodachrome/ from childhood. Chang explores her heritage, and she reimagines lives with devotion and loyalty. One immigrant woman, presumably her grandmother, plays countless games of solitaire... since your husband's death. Chang also draws on international literary sources: the title poem takes its list form from the Japanese memoirist and courtesan Sei Shonagon, and one especially vivid page derives its form from Eugenio Montale. An allegorical sequence entitled Serindia (i.e., roughly, northwestern China) reaches for a spare elegance that reclaims for Asian-Americans the cadence of Ezra Pound's famous Cathay: Having left my father's court,/ I live in the nomads' camp. I wear fur and felt. (Apr.)
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Review

Chang explores her heritage, and she reimagines lives with devotion and loyalty.

Leslie Chang's several images of trapped light remind me that if you open a kaleidoscope and shake the contents onto your palm, you will discover an assortment of, say, charms and sequins. In this first book, she has collected ordinary things to dazzle the reader--battered planet, aerogramme, jackdaw in azalea, the requisite jade bracelet--then mixes them into the poetry of family history and personal habit. Things That No Longer Delight Me is sure to delight the reader.-Kimiko Hahn

These poems move with poise and a painterly precision through the realms of history, elegy inheritance and loss. They are a map you can trust--if what you seek is an eternity,to cross the narrow portal between seasonsand be led back out in amazement.I am arrested again and again by the beauty and devotion coursing through these lines. -Tracy K. Smith

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 3 edition (March 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082323200X
• ISBN-13: 978-0823232000
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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