BY JANICE LEE
From: Enclave blog at Entropy Magazine
This book brought me to so many tears. It’s so breathtakingly heartbreaking and tragic and beautiful and observant in a way that seems so essential and sacred. I confess I started reading it almost a year ago when Chiwan first gave me a copy at my old apartment in Silver Lake, and I started reading it that night but had to stop. I was already going through such an intensely emotional time, and I cried all night and couldn’t handle the added heartbreak. I finished it this morning and I can’t say articulate the honesty and tragedy and beauty of the language contained in these poems. When I started the#finalpoem series, I asked this:
If the world were to end next week, what is the final poem you write, the final poem you give away generously, treacherously, genuinely, fearfully, necessarily, beautifully?
That tomorrow it may very well all end, and we would know to bear the pain as the day rose and broke.
That the present is undying yet death awaits us all.
That words can still connect and touch, that we still know how to offer to others a piece of our soul.
That space yet expands and we know when to keep breathing and when to stop.
That poetry can yet be given and received, from one human being to another.
Chiwan Choi is the author of The Flood (Tía Chucha Press) and Abductions (Writ Large Press). Chiwan is also a founding partner at Writ Large Press, a Downtown Los Angeles based indie publisher.
