A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems

These poems have a fearless life on every page, moving big themes into language, and pointing to past silences. But for all its sociable music, this poetry is also a serious and moving meditation on an inner life. Not simply the inner life of the poet but also--as the title suggests--the inner life of the nation that poet recognizes. This work is poised over both the public spaces where art and ethics are made, as well as the private reaches of a self where--as the poems show--an Asian American woman can weigh both identity and freedom. Marilyn Chin is a major voice. And this is a book to be treasured.--Eavan Boland
Marilyn Chin's poems excite and incite the imagination through their brilliant cultural interfacings, their theatre of anger, 'fierce and tender, ' their compassion, and their high mockery of wit. Reading her, our sense of the possibilities of poetry is opened further, and we feel again what an active, powerful art it can be.--Adrienne Rich
Marilyn Mei Ling Chin 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.--Denise Levertov
I praise Marilyn Chin's poetry!--Gwendolyn Brooks