The Quenching by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

The Quenching by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

$19.99

 

The Quenching, an insightful collection by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, reveals a thirst like a dry creek bed…a hunger like love…Water images thread through these sensuous poems, aided by her use of short, fragmented stanzas that eddy down the page.  Her quest is the exploration of the many boundaries encountered as a child of two continents, some delineated on maps, others, like the one between self and other, amorphous.  Her talent with languages adds fresh metaphors and the music of other voices: words juxtapose, visualizing boundaries—liú 流 flowing; clouds/distant as a fourth language:/ciel, nauges…

 

We follow her journey as a child of four in Tiens, Tiān 天! (look, the sky!)—I was born…a nomad…/the sky…my only constant…to the ending self portrait in vivo, a love dialogue—this kindling/body…needs no fuse/to light itself/from within.  She travels with others who wore my hair and complexion…Chink, jap, nip…examining borders—I would lift/the fence/into the sky/if I could; barbed wire around an internment camp—dhamma/adhamma, dhamma/adhamma, dhamma/adhamma; a prisoner resisting torture—I will betray tomorrow/ je trahirai demain…not today/ pas aujourd’hui.  Crossings offers passage: We walk with borrowed bones on sand once under a river; sky door opens one in the clouds like a book/in many languages; undula shares there is no telling when/in drifting…two waves/may/meet/again.  Poetry to read and reread.
–Pearl Karrer, poet
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Description

The Quenching

by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong 

$19.99, Full-lenth, paper

978-1-64662-917-6

2022

Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong is a poet, multidisciplinary artist, engineer, and mother of two children.  Her work in poetry and fiction has garnered six Pushcart nominations, and appeared in journals such as The California Quarterly, The Columbia Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Pedestal, Nimrod, and Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art.  Her first book of poetry, ravel, was a finalist for prizes by White Pine Press and New Rivers Press.  Liriope, her first play, was staged at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.  Her second play, There’s No Stopping to My Thoughts, was staged at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center with a grant from the California Arts Council (CAC).

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