The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty

by Marilyn Chin

A first generation Asian American offers a collection of poems reflecting images of both Asian and Western cultures

Genres: Poetry, Asian American

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1994

About the author

Marilyn Chin is an award-winning poet and the author of Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty and Dwarf Bamboo. Her writing has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.

She was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Marilyn Chin has read her poetry at the Library of Congress. She was interviewed by Bill Moyers’ and featured in his PBS series The Language of Life and in PBS Poetry Everywhere.

Reviews

[Billy Jepma · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I was giving this an honest “rating”—which is difficult to do with poetry—I think I’d settle somewhere around 3.5 stars, but I’ll round up to 4 here. Chin’s poetry is difficult, often obtuse, and sometimes frustrating in the walls it seems to erect. Her writing is superb, and she is at once evocative and affecting in her style. But she frames her work in such a way that it can feel like it’s trying to keep me out, and even as I want to dig into the undeniable depth of her poetry, the content and thematics sometimes seems to erect walls around itself that make it hard to get truly invested.

Nevertheless, even the poems I failed to interpret were still compelling, and the pieces that hit me hit very, very hard. The emotional, political, and personal nuances are stunning when they’re able to fully connect with the reader, and for those moments of sudden, brilliant comprehension, this collection is worth investing in.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

79 And All I Have Is Tu Fu
‘Pied horse, pied horse, I am having a dream.
Twenty-five Mongolians on horseback, twenty-five;
their hooves gouging deep trenches into the loess.
Now they enter a hole in the Wall, now they retreat.
Freud snickers; Jung shakes his head.

Then, a soldier comes forward who calls himself Tu Fu.
He opens his mouth and issues a cartouche:
all black beared, knitted-browed,
each meaning “what your viscera look like
after having been disemboweled!”

Pray, promise me, this is not what the dream portends—
my roommate’s in the bathroom fucking my boyfriend,
and all I have is Tu Fu.’

94 excerpt from A Portrait of the Self as Nation
‘I do hate my loneliness,
sitting cross-legged in my room,
satisfied with a few off-rhymes,
sending off precious haiku to some inconspicuous journal
named “Left Leaning Bamboo.”
You, my precious reader, O sweet voyeur,
sweaty, balding, bespeckled,
in a rumpled rayon shirt
and a neo-Troubadour chignon
politics mildly centrist,
the right fork for the right occasions,
matriculant of the best schools—
herewith, my last confession
(with decorous and perfect diction)
I loathe to admit.’

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But never forget the road you have chose
for there is no way back to the womb."

Chin's poetry is unapologetic. The majority of this collection is threaded with anger, bitterness, and sarcasm where she critiques Chinese culture and treatment as an "other" in the United States. Oscillating between un-Zenlike koans and more elevated language, transitions between and within poems and sections is dramatic and easily noticed. Her poems are rather narrative and typically fast-moving and jumpy, and it's interesting to see how various poetic techniques enhance the narrative qualities of her poems. Personally, I was a little turned off by the almost erratic anger/ pessimism within the poems, and I would have liked to see a little more celebration and lighter poems.

[Michalina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stars

[Elevate Difference · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been fascinated by the immigrant experience, especially within America. Being fifth generation American myself, it is safe to say I am quite removed from it. Yet I often do research and write about my ancestors, thinking about what they went through when they entered Ellis Island in New York and tried to make a place for themselves in a strange land. One hundred years ago, Europeans flooded our shores, and today, immigrants from many different countries make their way here. Their experiences are completely different from previous immigrant generations, right? Yes and no. I honestly believe that there are quite a few similarities.

Marilyn Chin's The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty is a powerful account of what the immigrant faces in coming to the United States – the good, the bad and the ugly. She writes lines about Mongolians on horseback and the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, as well as buying groceries at the Safeway in San Diego. She juxtaposes images that are so different, startling to the reader, but this is only a representation of what immigrants truly experience. From one country to another, so completely different in every way: it is startling. While the poet was born in Hong Kong, she was raised in Portland, Oregon, illustrating the fact that being raised in America from childhood does not necessarily negate the confusion and complexity of the migration experience.

One of my favorite excerpts is the following, from the poem entitled, "How I Got That Name: an essay on assimilation":

I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin.
Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular
followed by that stalwart indicative
of "be," without the uncertain i-n-g
of "becoming." Of course,
the name had been changed
somewhere between Angel Island and the sea,
when my father the paperson
in the late 1950s
obsessed with a bombshell blonde
transliterated "Mei Ling" to "Marilyn."
And nobody dared question
his initial impulse - for we all know
lust drove men to greatness,
not goodness, not decency.
And there I was, a wayward pink baby,
named after some tragic white woman
swollen with gin and Nembutal.”

Later in the poem she draws the two worlds together, showing the reader how intertwined they can be. In fact, one might say that these lines sum up the message of the entire collection: “The further west we go, we'll hit east;/the deeper down we dig, we'll find China.” The old world is never far, regardless of how remote it can seem. Traditions, perceptions, feelings, and thousands of years of history are always with Chin and others like her, even if they must scratch the surface to see them more clearly.

Review by April D. Boland

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few poems I just do not understand, never a good sign, but I am very attracted to the greater percentage of those I do like, which are mostly about the poet's Chinese heritage and feeling like a square peg in the round hole of America. I was also quite moved by a poem about the passing her Chin's mother and the promise of a future life without that disapproval. A very nice collection.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

For instance:


"....


All tempests will render still; seas will calm,
horses will retreat, voices to surrender.


That you have bloomed this way and not that,
that your skin is yellow, not white, not black,
that you were born not a boychild but a girl,
that this world will forever be puce-pink is just as well.

Remember, the survivor is not the strongest or most clever;
merely, the survivor is almost always the youngest.
And you shall have to relinquish that title before long."

From "The Survivor."

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Morrison, Marilyn Chin...Wang Ping...america's greatest poets

[Brigitte · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably great poetry, I just wasn't feeling it. I'm not a good judge of poetry and wish I was more into this.

[Fenixbird SandS]

Another incredible title!!

[Mills College Library]

811.54 C5392p 1994