Art by Indiana Sharp
SAGE is the latest collection by the pioneering Asian-American poet, Marilyn Chin. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. She received a BA from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the University of Iowa.
Marilyn Chin is the author of five collections of poetry, including SAGE (W. W. Norton, 2023); A Portrait of the Self As Nation: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2018); and Hard Love Province (W. W. Norton, 2014), which won the prestigious 2015 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. In addition to writing poetry, she has translated poems by the modern Chinese poet Ai Qing and co-translated poems by the Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu. She is also the author of a novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (W. W. Norton, 2009).
In this interview, Jennifer talked to Marilyn Chin to find out more about her reflections on writing from her inner voice, and her personal take on revising ‘the canon’. Marilyn Chin also shared her thoughts on being an Asian woman writer today, the need to fight for social justice, her fearlessness in embracing freedom, feminism and political advocacy in poetry and her feminist ideas towards the body and sexuality as a poet of colour.
Ultimately, as poets, we are in the quest for excellence and expression...my skin colour, my biology, my experience as a minority person bullied by the dominant society. All are integral to the work.
ORB: In this collection, you capture with humour the relationship between women and their socio-political environment, as well as represent women artists and their connection with or shaking up of the 'canon' and their access to their own inner voice and longings.
Yes, lately, I’ve been playing with more humour and satire in my poems - exaggerating the speakers’ personalities to explore different issues. Of course, women’s issues are ultra-important to me. The “inner voice” is personal and political. The speakers are flawed but are totally committed to telling the truth. SAGE is peopled with strong female voices-- from a Yuan Dynasty poetess who was ransomed by a “barbarian king,” to suffragettes who marched to the U.S. capitol in the early 20th century to everyday skating “yellow” girls. There are sages and visionaries spewing their profundity throughout the book. As Whitman says the poet contains multitudes.
ORB: It is fascinating to see the ways you experiment with form in this book, reinventing quatrains and ekphrastic poems, playing with dream poetry, deepening the complexity of the lyrical self. In particular, in "Girl Box Sequence", you tap into both European and East Asian poetry in exploring the female psyche, beauty and body. How does form or structure help to capture the contradictions in a woman artist's mind, and how do you see the future of feminist poetry?
Yes, the "Girl Box Sequence" is elliptical and yet precise. I had to cut deep with a knife. Most Asian women readers will identify with the characters in this sequence. Upon rereading it for this interview, I realise that this sequence is very sad. I was writing about my own lonely youth and my mother’s difficult life. The pieces are mostly written in quatrains and visually they look like “boxes”. We are imprisoned in our own box-like cages, physically, psychologically, culturally, historically. Sometimes our circumstances seem untenable.
I approach each poem as its own entity. I keep my art versatile. I always tell my students that form and content can work together or against each other in fascinating vibrant ways; just keep reading and writing and practicing and loving the art. The “lyrical self” is a dynamic instrument. You will magically find the best vessel for your ideas.
As for your question about the future of feminist poetry? Alas, people are now questioning the term “feminism.” I’ll just declare: yes, I see the need for feminist poetry in the future. Unfortunately, the news is filled with atrocities against women: domestic violence, rape, femicide…not to mention, in the U.S: the reversal of Roe vs Wade. I hate to bear the bad news, but misogyny will always be with us. We must write poems to reveal the hate.
ORB: The fragments in 'From The Poet's Notebook: Late Birthday, All Night Brush Painting' are also very intriguing, capturing the first-person speaker's encounter with Chinese calligraphy while experiencing or being surrounded by Western pop culture. The poem moves through different Chinese animal zodiacs as well. How does this poem embody our experience of an increasingly hybrid world?
Yes. "The Poet’s Notebook…" was a fun adventure; notice that contrasting with the aforementioned box sequence—this long sequence feels more spontaneous and chaotic and fun!
Actually, I was learning Chinese brush-painting as a means to glorify the ancestors and teachers, relishing the fun and love of making art and living a rich life. It took several years to get this long piece together with a few drawings, a short cast of funny characters, chance disruptions, sex talking with Vladimir Zelensky, trash talking surfer-dudes, phone messages, and cake-eating and convulsive diary snippets. There are tales within tales but buttressed by the central theme of a raucous late birthday celebration. Chinese zodiac creatures added to organise the silliness. I had to manage this long piece like a conductor with an orchestra of weird instruments. Of course, we must spend an all-night ancient Chinese brush-painting party listening to Beethoven, Hendrix and hip hop. Not “hybridity” but “polyphony” is the game. Let’s have some fun!
I am a poet who can write in a short compressive manner and in a long digressive manner. I credit my prowess to early serious training and experimentation and in writing many different types of poems throughout my long career. And having a lot of personal experiences, personal history to draw from. Hey, you can’t write about fun sex if you don’t have none!
ORB: How do you want to be received as a woman writer of colour?
I never cared about how I am being "received". They can call me a "DEI" hire, an identity poet, an immigrant poet, etc...all the epithets and categories can't really diminish the richness of my palette. They can't take away my "discography" as my students would say. By now, I have hundreds of poems to show that my work speaks to multitudes. Ultimately, as poets, we are in the quest for excellence and expression: my skin colour, my biology, my experience as a minority person bullied by the dominant society. All are integral to the work.
We must write poems to reveal the hate.
ORB: Some of your works are deeply political, almost like an artist's manifesto. For example, "Chair, An Enquiry" challenges the power imbalance in society, drawing from the incident of Christine Blasey Ford's allegation of being the victim of a sexual assault. In writing these deeply political poems, how do you decide on the use of a chair as a political metaphor, and how do you see the necessity or licence in playing with voice and language?
“Chair an Enquiry” was commissioned by the visual artist Heidi Kumao. I loved her multimedia piece and the chair that looks like a gynaecologist’s office, the red yarn, the empty spaces between objects, give the strange vibe of a Japanese print gone feminist—it’s an amazing cover that pulls together the abortion issue with Asian aesthetics in a strange impactful way. A friend asked me, “Why write about Christine Blasey Ford, she was a fleeting moment in history. Nobody remembers her.” I answered, “Why not write about her?” She is part of our sordid American history. These chairs are as expressive as roses and daffodils, especially if a bad boy Chief Justice is sitting on them.
Some of my most lasting poems foreground issues in the news, such as in the poem “For the Man Who Tried to Kill us” dedicated to the Asian women who were murdered in the Atlanta massage parlours. I can’t speak for other poets, but I like to engage with history and contemporary issues in my work. The muse feels and urgent need to engage with the world.
ORB: "Gratitude of Ch'in's Edge" (also featured in the latest Where Else HK Poetry Anthology) plays with the idea of looking at literary lineage from different perspectives, of respecting the canon but also challenging it. As a first-generation poet of colour in the US, how do you portray such complex, multi-layered emotions, or to stay true to your own poetics/poetic vision?
Thanks for accepting that longish wild poem for your anthology. “Gratitude on Ch’in’s Edge” began as a gratitude prayer. After my boyfriend’s death, a therapist told me to write in a gratitude journal. Of course, I was unable to keep the gratitude idea for long, because I don’t quite believe in new age empty spirituality. If we must force ourselves to be “grateful” then we are really unenlightened jerks, aren’t we? Shouldn’t gratefulness be an intrinsic value? I do feel very grateful for my fulfilling, complex life. My shifting perspectives and tones in this sequence show that I am relishing and expressing the ebbs and flows as they happen. The Chinese quatrains in this sequence could assert themselves in a multitude of ways: quiet, solemn, angry, cray-cray, explosive…they work against a Western reader’s idea of Asian poetry of quietude and devotion.
Yes, these pieces are brimming with heightened emotions and disrupt expectations. Yes, I deeply respect “the canon.” I love all of it. Damn, recently I reread Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and loved it! The older I get, the more I realise that there is not one unified vision for writing poetry.
The muse wants to receive the world with all her antennae. So, last night, I listened to prayers and hip hop! I also read Gogol’s stories whilst playing Pokemon; damn, I kept trying to zap Pikachu but the creature zapped me back tenfold. I zoomed a three hour trash talk session with a bunch of rowdy would-be archeologists. I visited a friend who was desperately sick with long covid. Poets are influenced by the noise of the world the way to show gratitude is to love the spirit of the moment and to write the best that we can with all the courage and liveliness we can muster!
I always tell my students that form and content can work together or against each other in fascinating vibrant ways; just keep reading and writing and practicing and loving the art.
ORB: With Kamala Harris having secured her nomination for presidency, how do you understand the role and the changing perception of being a woman of colour in America today?
Yes, I am so thrilled that Kamala Harris has secured her nomination for president. She represents a mult-racial, multicultural, womanist America. I believe that her presence will be impactful, given the last Trumpian years of misogyny - banning books, immigrant-bashing. I hope that all the meanness that he fostered will be reversed. I believe that Americans are jubilant because we know that Kamala represents the"democratic vistas," the better angels and and not Trumpian hate.
ORB: And then in poems like "If" where you laugh about stereotypes and hierarchies of power.
Recently, I’ve been watching stand-up comics and admired their smart punch-lines, visual and aural puns, outrageous yet insightful political assertions. Let’s be frank-- most poets are not funny. Most poets are self-consciously serious, because they want a noble place in the pantheon. A clown poet caste in marble is simply not elegant. Blah! So, in SAGE, I purposefully sprinkled a spurious lot of puns, satire and goofiness. I’m glad that “If” makes you chuckle. I wrote it for smarty-pants sisters like you. I make fun of Kipling’s iconic poem, because I secretly love and cherish its cheesiness. I also make fun of other important male poets: Williams’s “white meat chicken” and ha ha, “T.S. Elephant” is a puerile ridiculous pun. Yep, the fun is mainly for nerdy poets who know their literary inheritance.
Of course, I’m on the soap box with the pangolin—remember when CNN reported that the pandemic is caused by Chinese people eating pangolin? What racist hogwash!…and of course, let’s make fun of Trump’s cod piece. Ha ha!
If
(Not by Rudyard Kipling)
By Marilyn Chin
If you wear a red dragon on your dress
They’ll call you Oriental
If you wear pink jammies in the rain
They’ll call you a big baby, and still
Call you Oriental. If you dance naked
Eating plums, plums, plums
With a side of white meat chicken
They’ll call you Oriental by way of Williams
If you wear a dragon dress size 18
They’ll call you an elephant
If you wear a dead fox on your head
They’ll elect you president
Speak in growls and tweets and threats
You are proud to buy American
He’ll sell you a piece of Plymouth Rock
And 72 vrigins in heaven
Yeah, you are stupid, but you are our stupid
If you are pure of blood
You must not be an American
Professor Gates will share your ancestral tree
And prove that you are half Pangolin
I’d rather be one than eat one
I’d rather eat one than be one
If a conditional marries a conjunctional
You would be a pink-eyed proposition
From the perspective of a gull
We are a raft of tasty excrement
O gray and lonely April day
T. S. Elephant, T. S. Elephant
Reprinted from Sage: Poems by Marilyn Chin. Copyright © 2023 by Marilyn Chin. Used with
permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
JENNIFER WONG is the author of several collections including 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020) and Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). A new pamphlet, time difference, is forthcoming from Verve Poetry Press in 2024.