初读星子的诗歌是在加拿大的北美枫论坛，回想起来读星子的诗歌已经有多年光景，已经形成了一种习惯。我对星子的了解并不多，只知道星子旅居加拿大，却是一个以中英双语写诗，把中国传统诗歌和现代诗歌带入加拿大的中国女子。在2005年秋天，安大略省诗歌协会(Ontario Poetry Society)出版过星子英文诗集《Jasmine Star Light》，星子曾获得安大略诗歌协会2005 Ted Plantos纪念奖，并且有多首诗歌已经被本地Humber College选入学生的教科书。星子一直在异国以诗歌的宁静打量着光怪陆离、变化莫测的世界，并且渴望用诗歌给身体和灵魂找一个合适存在的位置。 细读星子的诗歌，可以发觉星子的诗歌创作是一个传统文化和现代诗意的多元整合，是在用诗歌建构一个诗性世界，又以诗性审读灵魂的世界。星子的诗歌表征一方面是在以跨时空的诗歌在传统的文化面前复现自己，让自己的诗歌写作对应传统， 另一方面又是在以双语的诗意与异国的诗意建立一种共存关系，表达出自己对生命和精神存在空间的一种独特理解。对于星子的诗歌创作，我可以从下述几个方面解析：
Review of Anna Yin’s ‘Wings Toward Sunlight: Poems’ — by Ron Dart
Ron Dart’s review of Wings Toward Sunlight is on Clarion Journal (05/2012)
We had the experience but missed the meaning. — T.S. Eliot
There is poetry that speaks to the head but never touches the deeper recesses of the heart, and there is poetry that massages the heart but does not really challenge the probing and questioning mind. There is poetry that is so abstract that the seeking soul can become lost in an inner or historic maze, and there is poetry that evokes and awakens, in a tender and suggestive way, the deeper longings of the human soul. Wings Toward Sunlight is poetry of the latter kind. But, there must be an inner quietness and attentiveness to receive the insights offered…
(read it fully on Clarion Journal or click Ron Dart-Wings Toward Sunlight )
Ron Dart (Professor, Editor, Author) review of Milton Acorn: In a Springtime Instant
****Also read other reviews on “Wings Toward Sunlight” ****
Carried on Wings: Anna Yin’s Wings Toward Sunlight on Cha by Goh Cheng Fai Zach (2012/03)
Review of Anna Yin’s “Wings Toward Sunlight” on Loch Raven by Lois P. Jones (fall 2011)
Poets to Poets (3)
After asking John Robert Colombo’s permission, I posted his kind words here :
On the first day of snow, your book arrived, sent by the unseen postal worker through the mail slot of our front door. It fell onto the area mat at the foot of the door, and was lying there amid galoshes and boots when I picked it up. The galoshes and boots were dry, mercifully, but your book I find to be bathed in tears. Tears of joy and tears of sorrow.
It is a beautiful book, crafted by a beautiful poet.
Short of performing a word count, I find there are three recurring thematic words. These are “you,” followed by “seed,” followed by “we.” I look for a tell-tale line, and once I find it, I am happy, and I know I will not soon forget it. (There are precious few distillations of poetic experience in most volumes of contemporary verse.)
You have a great tell-tale line. It is “You outlive.”
Beautiful, beautiful.
I emailed my thanks to him and told him that the first line of my poem “Goodbye Sarah Burke” is borrowed from him…
Today I read this from ARC Poetry: It’s not the manner of a writer’s dying that confers fame, but the manner of her living, singing, telling and imagining. That’s why we have coined the phrases “deathless prose” and “immortal verse.”
The same we will remember Sarah Burke for how she lives .