Defiant and uncategorizable, Lo Kwa Mei-en's Yearling, with its
teeming species, battles, and passions, read like an illuminated
manuscript: mysterious, visceral, awe-full. Hers are some of the most
enviable poems I have ever read, and herald Mei-en as the new standard
bearer for innovative structure, terrifying acknowledgment, ecstatic
statement, and, I daresay, beauty.--Kathy Fagan
Lo Kwa Mei-en's Yearling explores adolescence through a deeply moving
and poignantly raw lens. As the speaker ages, so too does the poetry,
creating laments for the loss of friendship, the loss of species, and
sometimes the loss of humanity itself. Harsh, forlorn and yet
effervescent, Mei-en's lyricism perfectly captures the ethos of youth in
an unsure world.
From Rara Avis Decoy:
Wild diamond rocking on the floor
of a predatory boat. Point & say sweet traitor
to the wood & water for wanting to be made
of both. My name is I know not what I am
as a country of mothers & fathers comes down.
They call me sleeping beauty. I dream I am
in flight, body unfolding, folding, a bullet
wounding water again & again--the mysterious
love of a father & mother a two-barreled
gaze. The gun in my dream speaks my name
& sees a beating vein. Takes aim--
Lo Kwa Mei-en is from Singapore and Ohio. Her poems have appeared in
Boston Review, Guernica, the Kenyon Review, West Branch, and
other journals, and won the Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize
and the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize.
