Cathy Park Hong
Introduction by Arda Collins
He said, When I die, I want you to wear
that smell
so that the smell will explode with the
memories of our time
together.
I blushed at his sentimentality,
Cathy Hong says in her poem ÒGift.Ó Hong has an epic imagination, as we
know from her collection Dance Dance Revolution, and which is evident in the selection
of poems that follows. The
speaking in these lines in particular is expressive of the larger movement in
her work. For Hong, as objects,
culture, language, systems of belief—the transhistorical totality of
civilization—enter the world of her perceptions, time is sensory and the
components of Òour timeÓ are distilled and released with the intensity of
fragrance; the sensory world of knowledge and emotion as it exists in the form
of an individual imagination is a perfume. In this idea there is beauty and romance, and what is
emotionally and conceptually spanned in the lines, Ò. . . explode with the
memories of our time/togetherÓ is expressive of the elegance in what these
poems do in and with our world.
For Hong, civilization and the space-time continuum can accommodate room
to register each one of us intimately and specifically, as well as absorb our
private imaginations as we dissipate.
The speaking and form of address in
these poems are somewhere between a letter and a song, expressed to a person
called Brother, and another called Sister. This evokes a cross between a state-mandated or ideological
relationship and familial one, as in ÒYear of the PigÒ: ÒBrother, we tried him & decided he
was guilty,Ó and
do you know your laughter carries isself
to our lornsome hills
& flushes my ears when I feed
Ma her broth?
Can I join you, Brother? Do you have
room for me?
These poems, and the repetition of the
address, also recall the blues, as in ÒSonnet.Ó ÒWe were promised Shangdu would draw women, Brother,Ó the
speaker laments. It ends,
A pang shudders this boomtownÕs bunioned
organ, Brother,
under this shipwreck of unsnipped
mastiffs, Brother,
& that missionary drest in robe over
dungarees comes, Brother,
& woos me like a persistent lover
woos, Brother.
I tell him I have no need for fraudulent
heavens, Brother
But still I fall into his arms, Brother.
There is intense emotion in these poems,
but for Hong and for her speaker, its origins are not in sentimentality. Nevertheless, as it is expressed in
ÒGift,Ó blushing points to the most tender and vulnerable range of human
responses, but for Hong that range involves engagement with emotional
contradictions, and there are often moments in which the speaker is conflicted,
as in the end of ÒSonnet.Ó
While there is a formal or classical
element to these poems, their relationship to the epic recalls JoyceÕs idea of
it. At the level of language, and
in its sense of invention, HongÕs work, like Ulysses, reveals her private interpretation of
the world, which is both comic and grave.
As in Joyce, the individualÕs private experience of the world becomes a
legitimate historical one; though most of us are not historians or
archeologists, we all must imagine the world in order to live in it. The
mastiff of course is the dog of the Romans, and the shipwreck recalls
everything from Homer to Oppen.
This is not to say that this is or is not HongÕs intention, only to say
that in the realm of her perception, all of the available components of time
are in play.
ÒOf course the archeologist is much,
much too old for me,Ó the speaker in ÒGiftÓ tells Sister. Civilization, god, time, the earth, the
ocean, are much, much too old for most of us, but we must still live in the
world of our emotions, of objects, and our projections of ourselves—ÒDVD
players/in every variation & also, DVDs of every genre (Westerns,/Pixar
films & Sister, they had all yr favorite Truffaut/films for a cut rate
price)—.Ó But the
archeologist is intimate and affectionate, Òcarving the most exquisite
miniature men/ & gifting them to me.Ó
Aubade
I long
for harmine morn to lift me
from my rank
hisshurled life but my
hellwhelmed
county of harsh scruffed
crops is
marooned, my plow a beached
whaleÕs
browbone on morose miles of moor.
Heft
heft. I cry to my ox
but no
hint of green wort. Just midges
to
torment my ox. You intone
forego
lament, willingly forfeit the ai-ai.
so I
slaughter my ox. So hi-hi!
I am
ready in my plaidwhelmed
puff puff
golf hat. Ready to be
whelmed
by a petstore cacophony
of
crickets shirruping in their cage balls,
Juddering
slam of hammering jack,
humming
sussurations of catamarans,
aerosol
striations of welderÕs firecrack,
then a
caracas of fist cracks
after
workers slurp off their goggled specs
to a
bassooning fog horn hooning
so
spooning lovers know when to return
to their
dawn shift, tuning cymbals
for toy
baboons who clap clap,
Hail the
Industrial Age, hail!
Sonnet
We wince & sing wielding steel,
Brother,
Days we pound with our sledgehammers,
Brother,
Nights we hoist up another shop, another
dialect, Brother.
We were promised Shangdu would draw
women, Brother,
But itÕs just we who throng &
throng, only Brothers
throng so I demanded quittance, only to
find, Brother,
a courthouse still being hoisted by a
human spine of Brothers
squatting one on top the other, chanting
join us, Brother!
A pang shudders under this boomtownÕs
bunioned organ, Brother,
under this shipwreck of unsnipped
mastiffs, Brother,
& that missionary drest in robe over
dungarees comes, Brother,
& woos me like a persistent lover
woos, Brother.
I tell him I have no need for fraudulent
heavens, Brother
But still, I fall into his arms,
Brother.
Year of the Pig
8.1
Brother, we were thralled by massif dead
pigs floating
downriver we hauled butchered
feasted
then squalled for it was rotted
meat.
Feeblest of bipeds we were but monks
prayed for us,
cured us of our rankled bodies.
Now the new observatoryÕs been ransacked
for its myths,
the telescope
shattered to a million bifocals
the furrier uses em now to sew tiny
rabbit mitts
wÕhayseed beads for forcep babes
of the landlord foe.
10.1
We found out who it was: during
hellswelt summer, his pigs
turned spotted & keeled over all at
once
the ground was already cramped with the
buried,
so his limp daughter & he
threw the loadsome rotted crits
into the river
& the river slewed them
down to us.
Brother, we tried him & decided he
was guilty.
11.1
Years turning worse since youÕve left,
allow me to give you my rundown:
year of the rat: 10 yields of sorghum.
year of the dragon: 10 yields of
sorghum.
year of the dog: 1 yield of sorghum.
year of the monkey: a drought. A lowland huckster arose
& told us our idle highlandÕs
perfect for his eye to all the stars,
an observatory that will attract
pilgrims from afar.
We will all profiteer. Like fools, we sell.
year of the snake: a
fraud telescope that shewed
not the promised swirling world of
million distant suns
We line to look & see nothing but
the flat hazen sky
We always see when we strike our loam.
10.15
I am covetous of you & curse our
birth order,
I long for lightspeed Shangdu.
Brother, imagine me.
I till & till our slender plot from
daybreak to cinder dusk.
When you write about the four hundred
string lights,
You & your new wife hurting
wÕlaughter
on a paddleboat
do you know your laughter carries isself
to our lornsome hills
& flushes my ears when I feed
Ma her broth?
Can I join you, Brother? Do you have room
for me?
4.5
Ma has passed the village gathered & wailed with trumpet lungs,
while I daydreamed of leaving these
parched shriven hills,
traveling far into the mirror cast of
ShangduÕs
pindle lights,
Then that melon bellied landlord a
genius
for making tithes, skulked by &
tithed me, tithed the grievers,
who quickly scrambled to escape the
tithe,
tithed our Ma for the burial.
Even the dead donÕt escape the tithe.
5.5
year of the pig: at last the rain has come
for days it slews & so the green,
the mossclung trees,
& teastained dotted moths.
IÕve tilled the bit of unsold land.
IÕve tilled & tilled & done what
IÕve been told.
Brother, IÕve tilled & tilled &
always done,
IÕve always done what IÕve been told.
Brother, why have you not written?
Brother, can I join you?
Gift
Sister, you will not approve but my
lover
is the last surviving, mannerly-hearted
archaeologist.
It began when he kindly gave me a
tour
of his home & unrolled a ball of
gold-crushed-sash to shew
me the rarest-of-all artifact:
a narwalÕs horn, carved with a battle
scene of 400 men on horseback.
The reliefÕs details so delicately
whorled & fretted,
I could detect the scale on every
blood-stained armor,
The bloodÕs gush of every scimitarÕs
gash,
the teeth on each neighing, reeling
horse &
even the vessels on a driven warriorÕs
eyes.
He said Once Shangdu was a city of
Craftsmanship,
They bartered Carvings & they
bartered Ink whose properties were proven
to be fatal, he said, when scholars were
punished
& forced to drink them
straight.
*
Together, We wander the open-air market.
They hock outdated tracts as nostalgic
curios:
The PeopleÕs Creed, The PeopleÕs Deeds,
The PeopleÕs Needs.
Other than tracts & electronic
gadgets--DVD players
in every variation & also, DVDs of
every genre (Westerns,
Pixar films & Sister, they had all
yr favorite Truffaut
films for a cut rate price)--
Apothecaries have set up shop, hocking
ointments
Like teatree oil to ward off mosquitoes,
Ointments claimed to be made of seal
blubber
to cure inflamed thyroids, balms as natural birth control,
imported childrenÕs Tylenol & cold
medicines thaÕtaste
like wincing sweet cherries.
All quackery, the archaeologist warned me,
except for the scents,
& bought me a vintage seagreen
atomizer bottle with a knitted squeeze bulb.
We were the first to import Tea Roses,
he said,
& before I spritzed the rich perfume
He said, When I die, I want you to wear
that smell
so that the smell will explode with the
memories of our time
together.
I blushed at his sentimentality.
*
I shd think it a favor of you not to
tell Ma of my affair
& tell her I will come to a decision
with marriage soon enough.
Of course, the archaeologist is much,
much too old for me.
Really, I have many suitors here
including
a Christian which you might think queer,
but these are odd times, Sister.
People are beginning to believe in gods
& godheads
Churches with fattened coffers have been
shut down & have
swiftly re-opened as profitable
enterprises.
The Christian who pangs for me hands out
tracts to passersby,
a tract of a different kind. He is also
a craftsman,
carving the most exquisite miniature men
& gifting them to me.