Add this copy of Dwarf Bamboo to cart. $13.06, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published 1994 by Greenfield Review Press.
Add this copy of Dwarf Bamboo to cart. $40.35, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 1987 by Greenfield Review Pr.
Add this copy of Dwarf Bamboo to cart. $59.98, good condition, Sold by Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Frederick, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1994 by Greenfield Review Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Signed Copy Collectible-Good. 3rd printing. Inscribed by author on title page. Owner's name on t.p. Slightly dampstained. Writing inside. (poetry)
Add this copy of Dwarf Bamboo to cart. $71.28, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 1987 by Greenfield Review Pr.
Add this copy of Dwarf Bamboo to cart. $79.51, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1987 by Greenfield Review Pr.
Of Dwarf Bamboo, Marilyn Chin's first volume of poems, Denise Levertov said that the poet "draws on ancient cultural sources and at the same time reflects something wholly Western, urban, and contemporary--so that we have here two kinds of sophistication combined, in proportions uniquely determined by her strong personal sensibility. The results are strong with an authentic and captivating strangeness, beauty, and offbeat wit." Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, Chin is currently on the faculty of the M.F.A. program at San Diego State Unviersity.
Chin's knowledge of Chinese and Japanese poetry is evident, but she wears her learning lightly. Against a backdrop of monumental change--the Communist Revolution, the Sino-Japanese War, the Cultural Revolution--Chin employs personae or the dramatic monologue to speak in the voice of Chinese women whose lives are captive to those events. She also pays homage to poets such as Basho not by writing imitation haiku, but rather by having that Japanese poet speak in an engagingly personal voice. And the voice that emerges in Chin's work is tough, raucous, biting, melancholy, and wry.
At times, as in the poem, "The End of a Beginning," Chin's imagery has the "captivating strangeness" to which Levertov referred: "This is why the baboon's ass is red. / Why horses lie down in moments of disaster. / Why the hyena's back is forever scarred. / Why, that one hare who was saved, splits his upper lip, / in a fit of hysterical laughter."
The book's second section, "American Soil," marks the entry into the New World: "We are Americans now, we live in the tundra / Of the logical, a sea of cities, a wood of cars" ("We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra"). While in "A Chinaman's Chance," Chin alludes to the price Chinese immigrants paid for that passage: "The railroad killed your great-grandfather / His arms here, his legs there. . . / How can we remake ourselves in his image?"
What gives Chin's poetry its jumpy aliveness is that "two kinds of sophistication," a quick-change act of voices, tones, and accents. From her bicultural inheritance, Marilyn Chin has fashioned a poetry wondrously strange and new. Chin has since published two more books, The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty, winner of the PEN Josephine Miles Award, and Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (W.W. Norton), but Dwarf Bamboo is the striking debut of her utterly original work.
