Dr. Sarah Yihsuan Tso is Associate Professor at National Taiwan Normal University. She is the author of The Extension of Space in Globalization: The Globally Extended Space and Human Rights in Theories and Modern and Contemporary Taiwanese and American Poetry (2020), Global Time-Space Reorderings: Literary, Cultural, and Cinematic Transformations (2014), journal articles and book chapters on Taiwanese poetry, culture, and cinema, globalization, American multicultural poetry and novels, feminism, and John Keats, as well as poems.
Drawn from her Taiwanese childhood, life in Taiwan as well as the anecdotes of Chinese and Hakka ancestors, Sarah Yihsuan Tso’s debut collection of poems written in English dwells on a vast array of topics such as bias, culture, suffering, luck, philosophy of life, Christianity, Buddhism, sexism, poetics, beauty, ethnic and gender groups, manhood, womanhood, environmentalism, geopolitics, migration, immigration, nature, and the inexorable fate of mortality. Written in an audacious, refined, and unique language par excellence, the book wrenches sapience from troves of dazing and memorable lines like: “The fate of concession is worn daily” in “a land ceded from the Dragon King, the Eastern Neptune.” “In this country, women and children are / conjoined twins.”
CONTENTS
－Global Meditations－
Under the Winter Roof-10
A Companion Poem to “Lord Leaf”-11
A Literary Language-12
Aubade for Sufferers-13
From to-14
－Flowers of Life－
A White Mare-16
An Amethyst Gecko-17
Flowers Don’t Speak-19
An Excursion-20
The Little Bird-21
－Buds of Time－
Does It Matter-24
Life Is Both-26
Why Do You-27
－Psalms of God and Buddhas－
Cheng-30
Songs of Water-31
Diamonded Cross-32
Never Alone-33
Sign-34
－Women’s Musings－
In this Country-36
Ms. Lin Can Drive-37
The Male Half: American Men-39
Not Darwinian-40
The Story of Mazang’s Metamorphosis-41
To Harassing Old Guys and Little Demons-42
Men in Taiwan-43
Women of a Kind-44
Women’s Musings-45
－Arias for Taiwan and Ancestors－
Fantasies-48
Fragrance from Progenitors-49
Wontons of the Father’s Daughter-51
Hakka Sister-52
Or, Witch-53
Gem Flowers-55
From the Sea of the Dragon King-56
Notes-58
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Under the Winter Roof
Under the winter roof,
the curlicues, shells, and filaments of heat currents
rose to the naked hands with white webs in the dry winter as
all was icy and gray outside the translucid windows,
wind blaring as pine needles swayed and shrubs trembled—
The heart was touched, as if by a bowl of brown-sugared red bean soup,
or by the five-legged sinewed hands in Van Gogh’s self-portrait?
Taiwanese sweet potatoes, indigenous bee larvae,
pilgrim and Latino corns, Irish potatoes, African nara melons,
and, in wintry bleakness
outside, the red wine of the homeless.