The River of Heaven: Poems

by Garrett Hongo

The River of Heaven was awarded the 1987 Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets for a distinguished second book of poems ( Philip Booth, Alfred Corn, Mary Oliver). In it Garrett Hongo has drawn from his unusual background (born in Volcano, Hawaii, of Japanese ancestry, and educated in California at Pomona) to provide the materials for poems that would be highly exotic were they not infused with a level-headed sense of realism and a strong feeling that mundane realities are perfectly natural material for the poetry of our time. Here, Garrett Hongo transforms his mundane realities into elegant poetry. The volcanoes of Hawaii, the gritty urban streets of Los Angeles, a California beach after the death of his father―the places of Garrett Hongo’s past metamorphose into a poetry that is compelling and immediate.

Genres: Poetry, Asian American

68 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 1988

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garrett Hongo, The River of Heaven (Knopf, 1988)

Hongo's second book of poetry was the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1987, an award which usually lends a great amount of buzz to a poet for a very short time. Hongo, unfortunately, is no expection, and not long after this book's release, he slid back into the relative obscurity afforded most of the country's top poets.

Hongo mostly writes in, and excels at, narrative form; a forgotten art in the Eliot-influenced American culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. Unlike most narrative poets, Hongo is willing to take the time to remember what poetry is while telling his story, and never lapsing into more prosaic sentence structure while still getting his points across. An example (I opened the book at random to pick it; seldom is a book of poetry good enough throughout to do that) from the middle of the poem "Morro Rock":

And I knew a girl once
who lived near there,
and whom I'd visit,
hitching north, needing her still.
She was the first I'd known
who could sit, oblivious,
still in her long shift,
pull both knees to her arms,
and rock gently in the sand
while a thin foam of sea washed around her.
I'd stand barefoot in the foam
while the ocean percolated around us,
and toss wet handfuls of sand
towards the combers, empty of feeling.
The Rock filled the space behind us.

There's not an unwritten rule of poetic creation not broken in that stanza, and yet Hongo pulls it off without, seemingly, any effort at all. Truly excellent stuff that should never have gone out of print.

[H]

those machine-spun
rituals of tenderness they called the blues
-jigoku

[Scott Holstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, I know Hongo is talented. Yes, I know I'm breaking the "literary canon" law when I say I'm rarely impressed and that he frankly bores the shit out of me. That said, I do admire his craft, and I met him at a reading on tour supporting this book, I believe, and definitely a nice guy, so I do have many friends and acquaintances who write stuff that's not really my thing (Ron Rash comes to mind) but I can still respect their craft, and besides, I doubt they like my stuff anyway. LOL! Cautiously recommended.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Some stunning poems. Others that left me so-so

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not fall in love with any of these poems, nor did any of them particularly speak to me, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. Many of these are a few to several pages long; very few are shorter than one page. Despite this being longer than I generally prefer I found myself enjoying them.

The main reason I enjoyed them is their narrative. All of them tell a story. The stories they tell seem to me to be the kind Tom Waits would tell if he were California educated, Hawaii born, and of Japanese descent. They are "well-lived in stories;" stories of being other; semi-seedy stories; stories of bravery, longing, desire, hopes unmet, and so forth.

[Boreal Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful imagistic poetry set in California and Hawaii

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful narratives. My sister's teacher, so I might be a bit biased.

[Regine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colorfully, grittily, prose-ily descriptive.