Drifting

Arriving in the United States in 1967, the Taiwanese-born Cheung had already published two volumes of poetry and one volume of prose in his early 20s. In translating his own work into English for this first U.S. collection (all of it from a 1986 collection called Drifters), he reveals a subtle ear for off rhymes and for the effect of simple vocabulary and syntax, seemingly reflecting, without anxiety or irony, the Western tradition of translations from Asian languages. The opening poem, ""Fragrant Herbs by the Mountain Stream,"" centers on a Tibetan knife the speaker has received as a gift and effectively builds political anger into didactic historical diction: ""But the Han Chinese brought in liberation and suppression,/ Modernization and pollution,/ Recovery and hatred,/ Tearing out the heart of the green, green plain.// Vaguely I hold this Tibetan knife in my palm,/ No one knows of my martial skill."" A series of poems centered around tea ritual suggest the subtle workings of gender, particularly in a poem in which the male protagonist imagines himself as a bowl of tea. The most resonant moments come in describing spring and autumn, which for Cheung are the seasons of the melancholic wanderer: ""In the fiction and reality of flower seasons/ To search for a good friend/ Transcending language and age/ Remains an heroic quest, and an illusion."" Cheung is less a philosopher than a social and political exile, a wanderer on American shores who is unsure not only of his own identity but that of his home country, stuck in its own limbo. The complexity of his speaker's situation, along with his melancholy and passion in response, are finely expressed in this collection, which will be equally at home on poetry or Asian-American studies shelves. (Dec.)