"Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light."

Thank you, Casey, who led me to this powerful little speech (see below - and watch the clip) from the TV series Northern Exposure, which Jeff said is a great great show. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to see any of it. Maybe later!

Goethe's final words: "More light." Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on, the night is dark and I am far from home, lead thou me on. Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light.

Chris (the character) quotes, among others, Psalm 119:105; Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"; John Henry Newman's "The Pillar of the Cloud" and Isaiah 60:1.

"To the Virtuous Woman I Desperately Want to Screw but Don't Want to Marry"

In 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know (2010), John Sutherland uses Andrew Marvell's poem "To his Coy Mistress" to illustrate the idea of 'double bind' (pp. 132-135).

Had we but world enough time
this coyness, lady, were no crime. 
[...] 
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near 
(L1-L2; L21-L22)

The 'bind' in the poem is that 'If you [the 'coy' mistress] don't submit, you'll die withered up and unfulfilled'. But this 'bind', Sutherland thinks, is 'disingenuous'. The 'Mistress' in the title, meaning both 'adored virtuous one' and 'illicit bed partner', already 'gives the game away'. Sutherland suggests that if the poem were titled "To the Virtuous Woman I Desperately Want to Screw but Don't Want to Marry", the persona's motivation would be more clearly expressed, although admittedly more vulgar. In a double bind situation, inequality exists between someone/something with power who binds and someone/something who has no power and is bound. In "To his Coy Mistress", the male suitor is the empowered one, as 'She cannot answer him with another of the most brilliant poems in the English language. Or, apparently, with the riposte: 'Marry me, then, if you want it that badly' (p. 133). Of course, the world has changed now.

Other literary texts Sutherland uses to discuss double bind include Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, George Orwell's 1984 and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. 

Of interest here is a neo-classical response poem to Marvell from the mistress's perspective by the Australian poet A.D. Hope; the poem ends with the lines: '(Though I am grateful for the rhyme) / And wish you better luck next time' -- see the video below. In fact, Hope wrote a collection of response poems, and "His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell" is one of them. This collection, then, is similar to Carol Ann Duffy's The World Wife. Duffy's book features works ostensibly narrated by the wives of well-known historical and fictional men, famous men reimagined as women, or women who were well-known in their own right. Some of the subjects are Mrs Midas, Mrs Aesop, Mrs Darwin, Mrs Faust, Anne Hathaway, Queen Kong, Pygmalion’s Bride, Mrs Icarus, Frau Freud, Salome, Eurydice, Penelope, Mrs Beast and Demeter.

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Greg Santos's The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010)

Watch the book trailer for Greg Santos's debut poetry collection, The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010). 

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Greg Santos's poetry was published in issue #10 of Cha.

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Ocean Vuong's Burnings

This post was originally posted on 30th October, 2010.

Ocean Vuong's Burnings will be released on 15th November 2010. Ocean talks about his forthcoming 43-page chapbook in this blog post.

Also watch Ocean's promotional video of the book:  

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Ocean Vuong's poem "Paramour" was published in issue#10 of Cha; the poem has been nominated for inclusion in Best of the Net Anthology 2010.

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Xu Xi Discusses Multilingual Heritage at the Hong Kong Book Fair July 2010

"We were postmodern before the term was invented. This is what I like most about Hong Kong."
"We talk about the great Chinese novel, the great Russian novel, the great British or American novel, ... to even put 'great' in front of a Hong Kong novel is almost an oxymoron, because ...."

-- Xu Xi


Xu Xi discusses multilingual heritage

Click here to watch the video
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Xu Xi's creative non-fiction was published in issue #6 of Cha.

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Sight and Sound of Gillian Sze

Listen to Cha contributor Gillian see here -- click 08.26.09 An Evening with Gillian Sze (Aqua Books. Gillian reads from her book, Fish Bones. Of the poems recited is "To John Lyman and the Portrait of his Father", published in issue #5 of Cha. And here is a teaser of Gillian's reading at McNally Robinson Bookstore.

Gillian Sze is a former guest editor and three-time contributor of Cha.