April 8, 2006

Ye Chen, Travel Over Water (Bitter Oleander, 2005). 63 pages. $14.

Some of the poems are too Sylvia Plathy for me:

I wear my watch on my right wrist
to cover the scar,
but people will see it ("The Scar," 13).

but when Ye Chen isn't in confessional mode, the images are striking and the poems read like dreams we have had but which we can only remember the gist:

The sea has disappeared,
only the tide
chalks the boundary.
Walking towards the night water
is like walking into a black-
skinned drum --
its insides a swinging crib,
but the beats rolls on...
pass the order:
Do not enter.

Above, the clouds in their web
dissect stars ("The Sea Dragon," 23).