We grow old
by Yu-Han Chao
We Grow Old is about love for family, love of Taiwan, love for ones culture, and most of all, ones lover. These prose poems written in a nostalgic and multicultural voice discuss many meaningful objects: cat toys, kimchi, pacifiers, raw eggs warm from a hens body and a family cow that was sold.
Yu-Han Chao writes with grace, beauty, musicality, and a particular type of melancholy. These timeless and universal Chinese love poems paint a delicate portrait of a young poets emotional and cultural landscape.
REVIEW
While the subtitles for Yu-Han Chaos debut poetry collection, We Grow Old introduce its contents as Fifty-Three Chinese Love Poems, these poems are not all especially Chinese or specifically limited to the subject of love. Chao presents poignant and funny moments with her family members, descriptions of her homeland Taiwan and festivals and customs from her culture. She reflects on the lantern festival, ghosts, Chinese sayings, and fascinating superstitions, such as never giving someone a clock:
The Chinese do not give one another clocks as a gift, because to song zhong, give clock, means to see someone to their grave, to be present at their deathbed, their last rites. Even if you hated someone you would not give them an object that so explicitly expressed your desire to see them dead. (Song Zhong, Chao)
Her poetic language comes across as plainspoken prose that is easy to read yet it possesses a special cadence and musicality. No line breaks are specified in each poemthe sentences simply run down the page in neat rectangular paragraphs.
EXCERPT
Rawness of the Egg
My father tells me that when he was young, his family had a hen. My father and his brothers were growing boys and always looking for something to eat. When the hen clucked, my father would reach eagerly but gently beneath the bird, and retrieve a perfect, brown-shelled egg. He would knock it against the cement wall lightly until there was a crack, and from that crack he would suck the sweet egg juices, still warm from the hen's body. That's a beautiful image, once you get past the rawness of the egg.
Publisher: The Backwaters Press
Release Date: September 15th 2008
Genre: Poetry
Release: September 15th, 2008
Length: 68 Pages
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