A Dim Sum of the Day Before, Steven Schroeder
Temple, TX: Ink Brush Press. ISBN 9780982440568.
The 52 lyric poems gathered in A Dim Sum of the Day Before were all written in southern and southwestern China during 2008. The south and the southwest have a long history on the edge, and these poems embrace it, beginning with a confusion of maos: "Speakers of putonghua never mistake / the late Chairman for a cat, but I do / so often with joy, delighted / that every cat I meet on the street / could be his ghost wondering / how on earth it came to this." While maos wonder, birds "tap dance / on the translucent roof" and "mayflies chant / there can be no pleasure / where there is no danger." When the Olympic torch passes far from Beijing "every person / who stops on the street / for a photo to prove / he was here stands / under a flag." Sticky flags the crowd wears end up on the walk, where "in the end women on their knees / scrape remnants off paving stones / so no one will walk on the flag without thinking." After the Sichuan earthquake, trees "can't resist a confetti shower / after rain. They scatter // yellow rainbows where / we walk, remember / the dead but dance for // the living, shower / each going on / with flowers." And, from this edge, on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the poet watches "States / line up living Buddhas / like barricades, tip them // like buses in burning streets, check / body counts, silence what is / out of line, contain // slow burns off stage so / nobody shouts fire until / all that is left is ashes." Celebrating the year of the rat in a "city rising, // like a single moment dancing in the clearing / of a truce negotiated on some battlefield," these poems invite readers to come to China "for the light, gray / soft through everyday / fog," point to a sign that cautions "a little heart / with your head," think Mapfumo while Tuku sings "I'm feeling low," sip Yunnan coffee in a shop named Salvador, "dream / a failed revolution in our own exile."
click for a larger image of the cover...
...and for a chapbook put together for a reading at Kubrick Bookshop in Hong Kong
Polly Ho's notes on the 3 January book launch at Kubrick
Reid Mitchell's review in Cha, issue 12, September 2010
Ben Myers' review on "This is Just to Say"
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