FRANCES CHUNG (1950 - 1990) published her poetry in several anthologies and journals, including The Portable Lower East Side and IKON, and posthumously in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry and Chain. A teacher of mathematics in Lower East Side public schools who often taught in Spanish, she was awarded several poetry fellowships by the New York Times Co. Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts. This unique collection has been edited and has an afterword by WALTER K. LEW, editor of Premonitions (1995) and author of Excerpts from: IKTH DIKTE, for DICTEE (1982) and a collection of poetry forthcoming from Wesleyan.
"Her work [is] direct in voice and intensely personal in subject
matter. Yet her identity is one that is always being refracted
through the larger world . . . This collection's editor, Walter K.
Lew, has done an admirable job of drawing [Chung's manuscripts]
together into a book that is rich with images and Chung's vital,
vibrant voice . . . Chung's form owes much to William Carlos
Williams; many of her poems are compact and oddly moving narratives
that give voice to those who are between cultures."--The New York
Times Book Review
"[Chung] wrote tersely and elliptically about [the Chinatown]
milieu and with laudable impersonality about events in her own
life. She never ranted, but made her points with carefully selected
details and bold irony . . . In rescuing from oblivion Chung's
artfully provocative multicultural voice, Lew has wisely respected
the integrity of her arrangements."--Booklist
"A marvelous poet of working-class experience and urban life.
Attuned from the start to the aesthetic as well as social
implications of thousands of lives unfolding anonymously in a
common space, she honed an art that intimates what can never be
represented: the patterns formed by the intersections of all those
stories."--Women's Review of Books
"Her work [is] direct in voice and intensely personal in subject
matter. Yet her identity is one that is always being refracted
through the larger world . . . This collection's editor, Walter K.
Lew, has done an admirable job of drawing [Chung's manuscripts]
together into a book that is rich with images and Chung's vital,
vibrant voice . . . Chung's form owes much to William Carlos
Williams; many of her poems are compact and oddly moving narratives
that give voice to those who are between cultures."--The New York
Times Book Review
"Many poems are the product of careful attention to rhythmic and
tonal effects, and recall the early Williams in their generosity,
unorthodox line-breaks and beauty."--Publishers Weekly
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