Comments on: Frances Chung, ‘Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2000)

By: Terreson

Terreson — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:29:04 +0000

once again, Barbara Jane Reyes, thank you.

By: Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:13:19 +0000

You know, even after watching Pietri perform his poem in the telephone booth in United States of Poetry, and even after hearing Faye Chiang talk about that connection with the Nuyoricans in the Lower East Side, I still wasn’t making the explicit connection between Chung and the Nuyoricans. Duh. And thank you!
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By: Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:10:39 +0000

Thanks for your comment Joel. I was fortunate to study this book with a Chinese American professor who could actually read Chinese. When he told me that the “duck shit green” really did read as “duck shit green” I don’t know why I was so elated. Anyway, Chung has a poem entitled “For Li Po,” in which she actually addresses the “translator,” of Li Po, Ezra Pound. So I think there are many ways for us into Chung’s work.
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By: Joel Brouwer

Joel Brouwer — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:04:03 +0000

Tremendously illuminating account of a poet and a tradition I’m woefully ignorant about, Barbara Jane. I’m grateful to you for dropping the knowledge.
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By: Oscar

Oscar — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:59:29 +0000

Wonderful write-up. I’m definitely going to revisit (my fourth reading) Chung’s work with all this in mind.

The focus on the telephone booth makes me recall the Telephone Booth poems of el Reverendo Pedro Pietri, another 70s era Lower NYC poeta. Pietri’s poems had the same directness of language and situation intermingled with deeper layers of global connectivity, local directories and urban palimpsest.

Thanks again for this.
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