River Merchant's Wife

by Di, Ming

• ISBN13: 9781934851432
• ISBN10: 1934851434
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-30
• Publisher: Small Pr Distribution

Summary

Poetry. Asian American Studies. Translated from the Chinese by the author and Neil Aitken. "The world that Ming Di constructs in RIVER MERCHANT'S WIFE is a richly complex one, operating in a twilight of loss and discovery and bounded by history and legend. Inspired by musicians, Ming Di works around multiple themes, often creating tension between seemingly disparate elements, as they settle into unexpected orbits or descend along unusual trajectories. Her work is surreal at times, creating a tableau of mythic dimensions. Everything is luminous. The moon is everywhere, and yet nothing about it is staticsometimes a slice of lemon, sometimes a porcelain dish, sometimes a wounded sun fallen half-way to earth, and sometimes a fish who desires to sacrifice itself for the sake of unrequited love. Always there is transformation and reinvention. Through all its phases, the moon is simultaneously what is desired and what must be overthrown. In her poems, Ming Di forces a reconsideration of the tropes and conventions of sexuality and gender, nationality and citizenship, displacement and exile, and love and aesthetic beauty. It is a world populated by the ghosts of composers and artists, their presences haunting the margins of the poems, while a personal narrative threads its way through, donning masks and adopting voices, reconfiguring the spaces and characters of each moment to reveal what always seems unsayable and unknown. These are ambitious poems, uncomfortable at times, but also surprising and unforgettable in the way they argue for a place in the heart."Neil Aitken, from his Introduction