May 20, 2006

Walter K. Lew, Treadwinds (Wesleyan, 2002). 117 pages. $13.95.

Walter was flying out of Oakland for the last time slowly en route to his new teaching gig in Miami when this came in the mail.

The book starts out wide and slowly begins to focus over the course of the read. The opening poem "天文学"(1) harkens back to an origin and its loss in process:

Early on we learned
That when we couldn't see the face
It was still there
Later, we covered that
Wound up with speech. But words also
Disappeared, could not
Repeat forever
And more and more
Things would not return to us
When we said them. Here they said
Learn this.
A song, a story
And though things are no longer near

You will see how they have changed (ll. 1-14).

While the use of Chinese characters in the title makes this origin uniquely Asian (remember that historically Chinese was very much the Latin of East Asia and in use in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc...), the "we" in these opening lines of the book act as a universal inclusive, describing a progression to songs and stories as a way to maintain memory that is/was practiced by every culture on the planet.

The poems turn more personal, more confessional, towards the middle. Take for example "Driving Back from the Rosy-Fingered Berkshires":

IV

Four more hours
I will be back in Baltimore
My mother leaves work early
To prepare the thick
Kalbi and dumpling soup
She promised last night by phone.
"If you could bring the right girl home...."(36).

The book pieces work from Lew's career over a fairly long span of time. The dated poems go back as far as 1977. The arrangement creates, or rather depicts, a very personal journey that in its singularity will resonate with a much wider audience.

"Soeul: Winter, 1986"

...
I left for the land my parents escaped
Here: I browse between the shelves for identity
And shelves for progress, wealth
and can't
Rage in opposition
I had left both sides (p. 93, ll.8-13)

________
(1) No translation given, but it means astronomy. Imagine the last character as the traditional xue; my computer doesn't have trad characters.