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Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade
"Snarling and accusatory, searching and forgiving, the cumulative effect of Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade is to carry the reader's' understanding of the lyric tradition in poetry forward....gnomic, fast enough to satisfy the scanner, yet plumbed with enough depth to reward after re-reading - in many ways the poems are original because of their variety. The bucolic in Minjie's poetry is often vanished, subverted for raw emotion and an embrace of the cosmopolitan... It is mostly Minjie's probing voice which provides the scaffolding for her poems." — Jason Stefanik, author of Night Became Years
Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade documents years of a poet's struggles with accepting a loved one's decision and starting new lives in new cities. Expressed in passionate words, the poems are reminders of a healing process through a young woman's searching for a better place for herself.
The 33 short poems in the book are categorized into the name of the four suits of cards. Heart, as a representation of spring and summer, recounts a timeline from an end to a new start; Diamond, which represents the earth, includes poems that deal with the worldly matters and the problems of materialism in love; Club, a symbol of fall and winter, envelops poems that tackle with irretrievable loss; and lastly, Spade, a leaf of the cosmic tree, is what brings us back to the subject of life. The last section includes the ones that tackle impermanence, acceptance, forgiveness for oneself, and finally, she might choose to start living the tomorrow.
With an implicitly melancholy tone, the author shares her journey as an immigrant, confronting troubles with finding love in a place of no pre-existing foundation, and the inevitable sacrifice every immigrant is having to leave home.
Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade is a short and sweet complication about looking for home, finding love, and finding oneself.
Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade documents years of a poet's struggles with accepting a loved one's decision and starting new lives in new cities. Expressed in passionate words, the poems are reminders of a healing process through a young woman's searching for a better place for herself.
The 33 short poems in the book are categorized into the name of the four suits of cards. Heart, as a representation of spring and summer, recounts a timeline from an end to a new start; Diamond, which represents the earth, includes poems that deal with the worldly matters and the problems of materialism in love; Club, a symbol of fall and winter, envelops poems that tackle with irretrievable loss; and lastly, Spade, a leaf of the cosmic tree, is what brings us back to the subject of life. The last section includes the ones that tackle impermanence, acceptance, forgiveness for oneself, and finally, she might choose to start living the tomorrow.
With an implicitly melancholy tone, the author shares her journey as an immigrant, confronting troubles with finding love in a place of no pre-existing foundation, and the inevitable sacrifice every immigrant is having to leave home.
Heart, Diamond, Club, Spade is a short and sweet complication about looking for home, finding love, and finding oneself.
102 pages, Hardcover
Published November 11, 2022
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