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thediebrary's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
I've been a fan of Mandy Moe Pwint Tu's poetry and her debut chapbook is an amazing collection that reflects her range and talents. She speaks in her own specificities while dissecting the complicated narratives of family, home, and longing with an unflinching exploration of her truth. She somehow managed to wring every last drop of emotion from my fragile little heart and transform it into some kind of understanding and healing. Also, note to my daddy issues buddies: this chapbook will wreck you beyond comprehension. Get some tea and tissues because it's a wild ride.
Each poem in this collection tells a different story: an exercise of grief, a shifting recognition of love, a constant search for belonging, and much more. At Sixty, My Mother explores experiences that affect generations past our own. The cohesive imagery between her mother's hair and the ocean immerses us in the currents of its story and how the ocean shaped her mother and how it will in turn shape her own self. Yuzana for the Monsoon, features her own poetical form (the Yuzana) that utilizes a zig-zag rhyme and leaves us standing heavy in the middle of a haunting monsoon. In Coming Home, she writes about the deep love she holds for her city that is seemingly unreciprocated - a home that is in crisis, a home that is no longer the same, a longing for home when home is always at a distance from the self and when the self is always at a distance from home.
I enjoyed all the poems in this collection, but some that really stuck with me are Fitting, Almond Cake, and Afterlife - just thinking about them makes me want to cry all over again! Monsoon Daughter Tries Narrative Therapy is also a must-read, encompassing the chapbook's intense themes in a single eight-page poem. What is amazing about Mandy Moe Pwint Tu's poetry is not only her mastery of language and form, but also her ability to truly capture the complexities of the human experience and the labyrinth of our relationships. Her poems juxtapose the beautiful, the haunting, the nostalgic, the forgotten - she transports us to golden, glimmering Yangon and snow-struct Switzerland, weathers hearts through sobering monsoons and shuddering snows, takes us along with her as she learns and unlearns and learns again.
"We imagine tragedy in the classroom
But the verandas are not the heights of coconut trees
And survival is not all that we know."
Each poem in this collection tells a different story: an exercise of grief, a shifting recognition of love, a constant search for belonging, and much more. At Sixty, My Mother explores experiences that affect generations past our own. The cohesive imagery between her mother's hair and the ocean immerses us in the currents of its story and how the ocean shaped her mother and how it will in turn shape her own self. Yuzana for the Monsoon, features her own poetical form (the Yuzana) that utilizes a zig-zag rhyme and leaves us standing heavy in the middle of a haunting monsoon. In Coming Home, she writes about the deep love she holds for her city that is seemingly unreciprocated - a home that is in crisis, a home that is no longer the same, a longing for home when home is always at a distance from the self and when the self is always at a distance from home.
I enjoyed all the poems in this collection, but some that really stuck with me are Fitting, Almond Cake, and Afterlife - just thinking about them makes me want to cry all over again! Monsoon Daughter Tries Narrative Therapy is also a must-read, encompassing the chapbook's intense themes in a single eight-page poem. What is amazing about Mandy Moe Pwint Tu's poetry is not only her mastery of language and form, but also her ability to truly capture the complexities of the human experience and the labyrinth of our relationships. Her poems juxtapose the beautiful, the haunting, the nostalgic, the forgotten - she transports us to golden, glimmering Yangon and snow-struct Switzerland, weathers hearts through sobering monsoons and shuddering snows, takes us along with her as she learns and unlearns and learns again.
"We imagine tragedy in the classroom
But the verandas are not the heights of coconut trees
And survival is not all that we know."