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Standing Water: Poems
A profound literary debut that recounts a child’s singular story
Since I made you, you may imagine I set myself on fire ―
or better, you lit the funeral pyre
from ten thousand days away. A young woman in Paris encounters an uncanny presence on a tour of a small museum. A study by Rodin of the dancer Little Hanako―titled Head of Sorrow ―triggers in the young woman recognition of her mother, a mother erased from her life since childhood. Thus begins Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water , one of the most remarkable first books of poetry in recent years. It is a journey into the past as well as the present―into the narrative hidden from the poet since birth, as well as the strategies that she has adopted to survive. It is a journey about how we learn to cope with, to perceive and describe, the world. It is a story about savage privilege and deprivation. Haunting the whole is the figure of the real Little Hanako―Rodin’s model, a Japanese artist displaced in Europe, the medium through which other artists dream and discover the world.
Since I made you, you may imagine I set myself on fire ―
or better, you lit the funeral pyre
from ten thousand days away. A young woman in Paris encounters an uncanny presence on a tour of a small museum. A study by Rodin of the dancer Little Hanako―titled Head of Sorrow ―triggers in the young woman recognition of her mother, a mother erased from her life since childhood. Thus begins Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water , one of the most remarkable first books of poetry in recent years. It is a journey into the past as well as the present―into the narrative hidden from the poet since birth, as well as the strategies that she has adopted to survive. It is a journey about how we learn to cope with, to perceive and describe, the world. It is a story about savage privilege and deprivation. Haunting the whole is the figure of the real Little Hanako―Rodin’s model, a Japanese artist displaced in Europe, the medium through which other artists dream and discover the world.
- GenresPoetryMental Health
112 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 2, 2016
"She is the pull of the moon, the slide of the tow.
She holds me in the water with the arms of a ghost.
When she ended her life, she took up in mine,
a street-dwelling squatter with nowhere to go.
She is not of the stars nor the sea nor the sky,
she is free of the myths she left with her life.
She glides in the night on the foam of a grave
--far from existence, she is Venus on the wave."
After encountering Rodin’s Hanako Head of Sorrow in a small museum in Paris (presumably the Musée Rodin), a young Korean woman named Eleanor (presumably the poet) confronts the lifelong absence of her mother in Eleanor Chai's beautiful, brutal, haunting debut collection of poetry, Standing Water. "Once you were born," the young woman's father tells her after forty years of silence, "she was never the same . . . With you, she stayed strange." Beneath the surface of Standing Water, there are powerful undercurrents of memory, loss, mental illness, identity, and personal catharsis. After my first reading, I returned to the first page and read this rare collection of poems again. Highly recommended.
She holds me in the water with the arms of a ghost.
When she ended her life, she took up in mine,
a street-dwelling squatter with nowhere to go.
She is not of the stars nor the sea nor the sky,
she is free of the myths she left with her life.
She glides in the night on the foam of a grave
--far from existence, she is Venus on the wave."
After encountering Rodin’s Hanako Head of Sorrow in a small museum in Paris (presumably the Musée Rodin), a young Korean woman named Eleanor (presumably the poet) confronts the lifelong absence of her mother in Eleanor Chai's beautiful, brutal, haunting debut collection of poetry, Standing Water. "Once you were born," the young woman's father tells her after forty years of silence, "she was never the same . . . With you, she stayed strange." Beneath the surface of Standing Water, there are powerful undercurrents of memory, loss, mental illness, identity, and personal catharsis. After my first reading, I returned to the first page and read this rare collection of poems again. Highly recommended.
November 24, 2019
Wanted to like this acclaimed debut collection, but it's incredibly boring. The entire book is about the poet's lack of a mother figure and the estrangement from her mother's culture. The poems are deeply confessional...I enjoy confessional poetry as a genre, but Standing Water just didn't do it for me. So much "I," so much repetition. Chai sprinkles in a few interesting words, some internal rhymes (and some strange couplets), and allusions to Greek mythology, Japanese theatre, and Rodin, but ultimately I don't think the way she writes about her life is compelling.
Poems that I liked:
0/29 (0%)
Poems that I liked:
0/29 (0%)
June 21, 2025
in an old dream, i plot a little boy’s flight. like a fight pilot, i drop a homing device back in time to spy into the landscape of my infancy before she turned her face away — before my need was extraordinary
under such light there is life
or is the danger real: present, always
a father, relying on the warmth of the last child to leave un-etched the veneer labored to glaze like the black lacquer trays we used for green tea and bean paste on birthdays
beneath the stars or starless nights that fix or falsify our fate, it waits: telluric
this is what love means for me: to be missed before you depart to be dreamed before you’re seen — a necessity and a vision
i never asked to be saved from what i could not imagine
nothing i imagine will (not) bring you forth or give you life
winnicott says the opposite of play in a child isn’t work. the opposing force to play in a child is reality
pg 48 disassociation
the hunch of my father’s back over my head would confess the grief of love, the sorrow of his beast, the enormous tragedy of the dream
as he rose he burned clean the orpheus in him
in his merciless hands we shift our shapes, leave our bodies behind, we are pure spirit: lustral lewd with life, supernaturally alive — unless i tire
fully vacant, i wait where i posed. he places natural lights around his finished mold. my eyes at rest, radiance winks in me as a pulse
i brink honor to the line. i defy prohibition: as woman i enact a warrior’s sacrifice
pg 54 trust
it can take some time to unweave what i feel from what i know and why and how. i am forever late to experience
i cannot get small enough. i am still visible
he could do it — step into the sprawl of his memory for answers to my questions, yet he is my substratum: i go where he is take. my need to know my origin is the weight of a fixed star in him. the balance of his inward drive to silence and my need to pry mg story out into the open keeps us torqued in love: conjoined and struggling
was she actually frightening, or was she scary because she was unspeakable, broken, fringe and the beginning of me?
under such light there is life
or is the danger real: present, always
a father, relying on the warmth of the last child to leave un-etched the veneer labored to glaze like the black lacquer trays we used for green tea and bean paste on birthdays
beneath the stars or starless nights that fix or falsify our fate, it waits: telluric
this is what love means for me: to be missed before you depart to be dreamed before you’re seen — a necessity and a vision
i never asked to be saved from what i could not imagine
nothing i imagine will (not) bring you forth or give you life
winnicott says the opposite of play in a child isn’t work. the opposing force to play in a child is reality
pg 48 disassociation
the hunch of my father’s back over my head would confess the grief of love, the sorrow of his beast, the enormous tragedy of the dream
as he rose he burned clean the orpheus in him
in his merciless hands we shift our shapes, leave our bodies behind, we are pure spirit: lustral lewd with life, supernaturally alive — unless i tire
fully vacant, i wait where i posed. he places natural lights around his finished mold. my eyes at rest, radiance winks in me as a pulse
i brink honor to the line. i defy prohibition: as woman i enact a warrior’s sacrifice
pg 54 trust
it can take some time to unweave what i feel from what i know and why and how. i am forever late to experience
i cannot get small enough. i am still visible
he could do it — step into the sprawl of his memory for answers to my questions, yet he is my substratum: i go where he is take. my need to know my origin is the weight of a fixed star in him. the balance of his inward drive to silence and my need to pry mg story out into the open keeps us torqued in love: conjoined and struggling
was she actually frightening, or was she scary because she was unspeakable, broken, fringe and the beginning of me?
December 26, 2018
Eleanor Chai's poems are smart and do exactly what they set out to do. This book is an exploration of the poet's relationship with her mother (or perhaps more accurately lack thereof) and her trauma. It was much more direct and personal than I usually would enjoy reading and I wouldn't want to read too many books like it in a row, but it very much succeeded in its aims--if you like more confessional poetry, this is probably a perfect book for you.
My favorite poem in the collection was the title piece, which makes up the whole second section of the book, broken up into 26 numbered parts. Here is a bit from the second part of the poem:
My favorite poem in the collection was the title piece, which makes up the whole second section of the book, broken up into 26 numbered parts. Here is a bit from the second part of the poem:
A finer incubator for plague than running orThe way the image of standing water and the knowledge of parasites and their diseases is woven flawlessly and with great care into the story about the poet's mother in the title poem and I think it sets that poem above the rest of the book for its construction and interest. The rest of the book is heartfelt and strong, but for me the title poem was the only piece that really stood out as brilliant.
flowing water, standing water poses
a grave danger when the weather is warm enough.
A breeding kingdom for vectors and disease lies
beneath the still impassive surface--
Malaria. Yellow-fever. Cholera. Parasites
thrive, living off the living
to survive. They multiply and gain strength,
gain strength and multiply.
Strain
humanity will never be rid of--
May 21, 2018
I loved her intrusion into the classical mode. She works like a drone waiting in a pale blue sky to hammer home her identity as human and frail as a lotus flower on a flaccid pond. Yet, as sturdy as the ships mast in a gale she delivers potent lines that sing as beautifully as a Japanese haiku. A classic in the making. And somehow the tenderest fiddle head weathers the storm better then a tall Cedar. Forcing the illusions out and harmonizing with dove like songs, she made my day complete
July 3, 2017
bittersweet life story in poetry
well worth reading
well worth reading
October 25, 2020
Just -- underwhelming and abstract.
May 23, 2016
Very thoughtful and moving--the ideas throughout all tied together, knitted around a mother's death and identity.
September 9, 2016
Haunting and beautiful--powerfully questioning what we are without a mothers.
July 18, 2016
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews