Picture Bride
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Cathy Song; Foreword by Richard Hugo
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Format: PaperPrice: $17.00
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The winning volume in the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Cathy Song’s Picture Bride, a book about people and their innumerable journeys. Distinguished poet Richard Hugo says, “Cathy Song’s poems are flowers: colorful, sensual, and quiet, and they are offered almost shyly as bouquets to those moments in life that seemed minor but in retrospect count the most. She often reminds a loud, indifferent, hard world of what truly matters to the human spirit.”
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1955, Cathy Song received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1977 and an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University in 1981. Her poems have appeared in an anthology of asian-pacific literature and in Dark Horse, The Greenfield Review, and West Branch.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1955, Cathy Song received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1977 and an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University in 1981. Her poems have appeared in an anthology of asian-pacific literature and in Dark Horse, The Greenfield Review, and West Branch.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1955, Cathy Song received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1977 and an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University in 1981. Her poems have appeared in an anthology of asian-pacific literature and in Dark Horse, The Greenfield Review, and West Branch.
"The Yale Series of Younger Poets remains the most prestigious [of poetry contests]."—Library Journal
"A powerful collection, strongly rooted in nature."—Library Journal
"A newcomer well on top of her craft. . . . At the age of 27, Song knows better than most established poets the power of the sense of touch."—Peter Thorpe, Rocky Mountain News
"Song sees the fractured world of immigrant Asians with a compassionate yet cool eye. These sensual, calm poems are themselves the fruit of East-to-West transplanting. They are both beautiful and timely."—Doris Earnshaw, Los Angeles Times
"The words that most readily come to mind in describing Song's work are delicacy, sensitivity, restraint, elegance, control. . . . This is not poetry of ideas but of gestures and voices. We are given some memorable portraits, especially of women. . . . There is a good deal of quiet music in these portraits of individuals who endure unlived lives and of the more fortunate who find outlets for their passion and art. Song, herself obviously devoted to the most scrupulous craftsmanship (there are no excesses in these poems, no unpolished corners), is especially acute in describing various modes of expression, whether growing orchids, preparing vegetables, or . . . sewing perfect seams. . . . From the cloth in her own confident hands, Cathy Song has fashioned something wondrous and fine."—Joel Conarroe, The Washington Post Book World
"A quiet collection of very fine poems. Song has filled her first book with sensuous, delicate poetry, lines to be read alone on rainy days. Picture Bride is divided into five parts, each part named for a flower. The poems themselves are blossoms too, as they spring fresh from the page, shyly triumphant. Though Song's poems are light and sweet, they posess a strength that is immutably, passively powerful. . . . Let's hope there is more coming form this wise, young poet with her honesty and flowers and blue painters."—Elise Eisenberg, The Chicago Literary Reviewpossess
"Reading Cathy Song's Picture Bride is a sensual experience, with pleasures on almost every page. . . . Song writes intensely specific, exposed poems. Each one proceeds like a pomegranate being opened, only the vivid seeds are jewels, no two alike. What appear to be straightforward lyrics about family and events become at some bright turning or quiet revelation pure inventions, subtly aimed at prepared effects. Even her tone of shyness is not what is seems. It becomes an expression the poems wear, masking a resilient survivor, strong-willed and patient, able to handle a surprisingly wide range of experience."—Dabney Stuart, USA Today
"Colorful; and luminous poems gracefully and quietly etch memories of childhood and the lives of people journeying into the world."—Booklist (featured in "Notable Books of 1983")
ISBN: 9780300029697
Publication Date: September 10, 1983
Publication Date: September 10, 1983
89 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
