Paring

by Travis Chi Wing Lau

Paring is a poetic meditation on the processes of change. The title refers to the act of "paring"-a peeling away of layers and parts toward the formation of a self. To that end, my collection asks what it means to do this work of paring over time: What gets left behind or violently removed in the pursuit of growth, particularly as a queer, disabled person of color whose histories and experiences are so often marked on the skin? How do we reconcile the fact that what we pare away may have once enveloped us, protected us but no longer? "Paring" also suggests the fruit: this book sits with what has already flowered and what has not yet come to fruition, all of which will come to rot after flourishing.

Genres: Poetry

28 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. He received his B.A. in English with a minor in Classical Civilization from the University of California, Los Angeles (2012). He received both his M.A. (2013) and Ph.D. (2018) in English at the University of Pennsylvania. His work is primarily focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture with research and teaching interests in literature and science, the history of medicine, and disability studies.

Travis has contributed to numerous publications dedicated to accessible public scholarship like Synapsis, Public Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Lapham’s Quarterly. He also regularly reviews collections of poetry for literary and arts journals like Up the Staircase Quarterly and Tupelo Quarterly.

Travis has over a decade of teaching experience. He previously taught at BrainChild Education, a K-12 tutoring center in Oakland, CA. From 2010-2012, he also worked as a peer learning facilitator at UCLA's Academics in the Commons/Athletics Peer Learning Labs, where he regularly held tutorials on composition and literature. He also served as an Adjunct Instructor in English for the Community College of Philadelphia and graduate student instructor for University of Pennsylvania’s Department of English and The College of Liberal and Professional Studies Program. Most recently, he was Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in English at The University of Texas at Austin.

Beyond teaching, Travis has worked as a Student Educator for the Armand Hammer Museum, where he developed and gave public tours of art exhibitions. In 2010, Travis worked internationally as an intern and guest English instructor at Ryugaku Journal, a Japanese publication catering to Japanese students interested in studying abroad in the US, UK, and Australia.

Alongside his academic and public writing, he is also a poet who writes often about embodiment at the intersections of queerness and disability. His most recent chapbook, Paring, is available through Finishing Line Press.

Travis currently resides in Columbus, Ohio with his partner and regularly flies to Atlanta to see his family. He has a rescued grey tabby cat named (Freddie) Mercury. He has been practicing taiko drumming since 2008 and has played with San Francisco Taiko Dojo, Atlanta Taiko Project, and Philadelphia’s Kyo Daiko.

Reviews

[Misty Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you read this book you can't help but feel every word and all the spaces in between. When you set it down you can't help but think about not only the individual poems, but the collection as a whole and what the concept of paring means to each of us. For the author, paring is multitudinous. For the reader, the same.

The opening text "pare, v."--a kind of epigraph--lays out a framework for this multiplicity, and with this definitional work in mind, we have to think about the way we exist in our bodies and in our psyches as well as how our lived experience is fraught with tension, but a kind of tension that requires reflection in order to show us that _this is life_.

Whether or not we live in/with pain (of any kind, and who doesn't?, but often it's a matter of degree), or watch others in daily anguish, we are witnesses to what lies on the surface and what that surface covers/shelters/hides/protects. What we see, what we consume, what we cut, what is cut, how we understand ourselves in relation to ourselves, and how we understand ourselves in relation to others: it's all paring.

As the book's intended epigraph states, this book is for all (of us) that didn't come to fruition (as we and others hoped for or expected). This book is also for all that still may blossom. There is that tension in this book, but again that is life: a push and pull, a give and take, a gain and loss. It's all about finding the beauty in that realization.

Ultimately, Travis Chi Wing Lau, to quote the final word in the book's last poem, has given us a "beacon." This book is not so much a warning as it is a signal and a celebration of genuine, heartfelt retrospection and inspection. It is a guide for all of us as we think about who we are and what we live with, not who we're supposed to be or what others want us to be.

Sometimes "the knife / pares away / more than / skin," but that's precisely when we need to pay attention to what's underneath. I know I have, and I know, too, that my review here cannot do justice to the beauty and brilliance of these poems.

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique combobulation of words, images, and sounds, penned by Lau. It will be interesting to see what he does next…

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning short collection about cultural heritage, desire, pain, and so much more. It’s tempting to read into this “queer species of mutterings” the kinds of pain and suffering that attend the act of paring away. But equally there is in each poem the beautiful that can only be known through the pain, like the bitter tea that brings healing.

[Sara Moore Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gorgeous book reminded me we’re all vegetation. There’s so much nature and ceremony in these words. The body and the land is pared down. It’s queerness and disability and old world romanticism blended together into stunning and evocative language. Loved!

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are lovely. They feel light, hanging above in a breath, touching down only by virtue of form or punctuation. But light in the way mist is, or ghosts. Or stories, or wishes. Powerful even if light.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Note that I purchased this book a while back, before I was aware of all manner of shadiness, vanity press-adjacent schemes, and general unpleasant stuff about Finishing Line Press, which I will no longer be purchasing any books from. There are a good number of Reddit and Twitter threads pertaining to this, so I'm not going to rehash them here, but here's a good blog post by someone who turned an offer by FLP down: https://kendalldunkelberg.com/2019/03...*

Obviously, the above comment doesn't influence my review of this book –– I was actually really disappointed by Paring, because I enjoy Lau's other work and overall contributions to the disability poetry community. I found the majority of Paring to be lacking the uniqueness and edge that sends disability poetry over the edge for me, and I suppose the language and grammars it used felt a bit too..predictable? Certainly not a bad chapbook, nor bad poems, but by the end I was more deflated than inspired.

[Sam Wein · Rating 5 out of 5]

a stunning, cutting, biting, sexy, contemplative, brilliant chapbook. Loved reading this!!!!!! I brought it to a lover's house and left it there, and he was just as obsessed with it as I was. Important queer literature!!