The Quenching

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 ¿y flowing; clouds/distant as a fourth language:/ciel, nauges... We follow her journey as a child of four in "tiens, ti¿n ¿$¿¿! 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