Synopses & Reviews
“Chin’s creativity as a poet is undeniable, as she physically shapes poems into images and breaks traditional forms” (
International Examiner). Rich with emotional nuance and electric with high-flying verbal experimentation, the poems in
Hard Love Province include love songs and elegies. Polyphonic and hard-hitting, they are at once elegant and raw, mournful and wry.
From “Nocturnes”
Beautiful moon the murderer begins to sing
The thief takes off his mask to smell the
heliotrope
A dirty girl’s face against a clear night pane
dreams of a strawberry pie at Marie Callendar’s
A junkie steals asters from a rich man’s grave
And spreads them on the modest mound of his
mother
Review
"A high-octane elegy that mourns the beloved even as it implicates the mixed-up world the beloved has left behind." Publishers Weekly
Review
"The toughness in Chin's poems is something we have yet to reckon with. She embraces and writes about the conundrum of being a daughter of two cultures, a woman growing older, a woman grieving for her lovers, both of whom have died, a woman remembering her childhood... Chin brings something fresh and daring to her work." John Yau, Hyperallergic
Synopsis
Winner of the 2015 Anisfield-Wolf Prize for Poetry From a poet of "dazzling longing" (), a stunning new collection of haunting elegies and playful quatrains.
Synopsis
"Chin's creativity as a poet is undeniable, as she physically shapes poems into images and breaks traditional forms" (). Rich with emotional nuance and electric with high-flying verbal experimentation, the poems in include love songs and elegies. Polyphonic and hard-hitting, they are at once elegant and raw, mournful and wry.
Synopsis
Marilyn Chin is a poet acclaimed by Adrienne Rich for her "powerful, uncompromised, and unerring" poems. Dancing brilliantly between Eastern and Western forms, fusing ancient Chinese history and contemporary American popular culture, she is one of the most celebrated Asian-American poets writing today.
About the Author
Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of three previous poetry collections and a novel. Her work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, and Best American Poetry, among other publications. The winner of the PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award, five Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the United States Artists Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, among other honors, she lives in San Diego.