Top 15 Marilyn Chin Quotes

America is no longer a monolithic, European-derived culture. It is no longer a mono-lingual or mono-cultural country, and the margins are moving toward the center. That's to say that those of us who have an urgent message or who have polyphonic voices or who have colorful backgrounds and interesting lives and pasts have a lot to say, and it's now our turn to say it. Indeed, there's more urgency in what we have to say, and the contemporary poetry world can't keep us out. That's the thing. We're breaking new ground, and this is the voice of America. My voice is one of the many voices of America.

Food is celebratory, but its flip side is hunger and deprivation. Spiritual deprivation and hunger in the new country are important motifs of ethnic American literature. Hunger in the "gold" country, in the land of the plenty is almost obscene, so there always that doubleness in my work when I write about food.

As a poet I believe I need to work in both Eastern and Western paradigms; I need to know both traditions.

When Americans talk about racial politics they talk about the poles of black and white, where one group may be demonized and one group may be sanctified. I think that we must meet in the gray space in between to find harmony.

Just as I think it's impossible to keep Chineseness pure, I think it's also impossible to keep whiteness pure. I think everything must merge, and I'm willing to have it merge within me, in my poetry.

I feel that I'm a conduit for many voices. Historical voices, ancient voices, contemporary feminist voices. Women's voices mostly.

poetry is my passion. It is my art. It is my love, it is my first love beyond all loves, beyond romantic love. It's as necessary for me as breathing is necessary for me. I can't live without it.

I see myself and my identity as nonstatic. I see myself as a frontier, and I see my limits as limitless. Somebody once accused me of being a leftist radical feminist, West Coast, Pacific Rim, socialist, neo-Classical, Chinese American poet. And I say, "Oh yes, I am all of those things." Why not? I don't believe in static identities. I believe that identities are forever changing.

I hope my work will prompt someone to consider or study more about Chinese poetry.

Adrienne Rich believes “the poem must serve” the people. Somehow, I don’t want my poems to be relevant to only a few readers in academia.

Early on, I was informed by theorists such as Cixous, Said, Spivak, Gates and mostly postcolonial and feminist theorists. I learned a lot from the black arts movement. I loved reading black feminist thinkers on my own (outside of academia)—Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Angela Davis, June Jordan, bell hooks, etc. Tough women poets/thinkers like Gloria Anzaldua and Tri Min Ha. And of course, Adrienne Rich.

I retired from my tenured job early partly because I would like to devote more time to writing poetry. The ancients did that too, they retreated to the countryside and “cleanse from the mud” of the academy and “palace art”. They retreated into the woods to hear their own voice again. Of course, these were rich privileged aristocratic poets. Some were forced exiles like Du Fu, who wrote some of his best works in his later years. In angst, of course. He felt abandoned. However, as we all know, he became the greatest poet of China.

It’s important to have a transnational readership. To not have borders, to have one’s poetry travel well. I celebrate my Americanness. I celebrate my Chinese-ness. I celebrate my transnational identity.

I belong to the American legacy and deserve a place in it.

I think it’s important to reinvent with poetry...I like to keep experimenting. It’s important to love your genre and the possibilities. There’s so much to explore for those poets with bilingual and multicultural backgrounds as well.