If Chen inherits an eastern tradition, she remains fully conversant with the west. Her poems may encounter the hotel rooms of Edward Hopper, or here a pine tree as both Buddhist apsara and Greek spearbearer. Yet her universe, however tangible, retains at its core a profound solitude, perhaps like the shadowy interior of a violin, an emptiness where the strings' vibrations resonate and amplify.
George O'Connell on "Buddhist Pine" |
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"Form Grants Autonomy to Poems: A Conversation with Shane McCrae"
"When I first started reading poems as a teenager, and for years thereafter, I found poems more difficult to read than anybody I have ever met. Every poem—actually every poem—was incomprehensible to me. And if I hadn’t found poems incomprehensible, and as a result read as many poems as I possibly could, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. And I’m happy in my life. I’m better for the difficult poems I’ve struggled with."
via ONLY POEMS |
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What Sparks Poetry: Mathias Svalina on "Thank You Terror”
"The best description I know of the creative process can be found in Remedios Varo’s 1957 painting The Creation of Birds. In the painting, a figure—either half-owl or a person in an owl-costume—refracts distant starlight through a triangular magnifying glass. The refracted starlight dries birds drawn with a pen emerging from a violin worn around the owl-person’s neck. The birds, as their ink dries, lift off the page & into life." |
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