Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Cathy Song
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Presentation by September Olsen
2011
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Biography
Cathy Song:
The Asian-American Writer
"Song's poems are flowers—colorful, sensual
and quiet—offered almost shyly as bouquets to
those moments in life that seemed minor but in
retrospect count the most." (“Cathy SongIntroduction”)
This quote said by Richard Hugo, a friend of
Song’s, was used to describe Cathy Song’s poetry.
Cathy Song was born on August 20, 1955 in Honolulu,
Hawaii. Her father, Andrew Song, was an air pilot; while her mother, Ella, was a
seamstress who was also an immigrant from China. As a child, Song and her family
traveled a lot which got her interested in writing about the scenery she saw and the
different places she experienced (“Cathy Song Introduction”). Song started writing
her first poetry collection called Picture Bride while in college. Her first actual poem,
Picture Bride, was influenced by her grandmother coming to America from Korea for
a marriage arranged through the exchange of pictures, hence the name “Picture
Bride”. While at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, Song met her husband
Douglas McHarg Davenport (“Cathy Song”, Poetryfoundation.com).
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Biography
(Cont.)
They then moved to Denver, Colorado so he could finish his medical degree
(“Cathy Song”, apa.si.edu). While there, Song finished her second poetry
collection titled Frameless Windows, Squares of Light. The couple now lives in
Honolulu, Hawaii with three children (“Cathy Song”, Poetryfoundation.com).
Cathy Song started writing at a young age. Her family would travel
around the country a lot as a child and everything she saw influenced her to start
writing. She would write about all the places they went to and the scenery she
saw, but none of these writings were ever published. Her high school teacher,
John Unterecker, encouraged Song to keep up her talent for writing and told her
it would get her somewhere in the future (“Cathy Song”, Poetryfoundation.com).
For college, Song left Hawaii and went to Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated
from Wellesley College in 1977 with her Bachelors of Arts Degree. In 1981, she
graduated from Boston University with her Masters of Arts degree in creative
writing (“Cathy Song”, apa.si.edu). Song published her first set of poems in 1983
called Picture Bride. This series of poems won the Yale Series of Younger Poets
competition. Song also won the Shelley Memorial Award and the Hawaii Award
for Literature for her other poetry collections. In 1997, Song was a recipient of an
annual Literature award in which she received $20,000. Song was also the first
Hawaiian writer to receive national recognition for her poems (“Cathy Song”,
Poetryfoundation.com).
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Biography
(Cont.)
Cathy Song’s poetry is not meant to be known as Asian-American
poetry, but some of her works are classified as that (Pao). Some of Song’s poems
have been said to look like very detailed poems written about paintings she has
seen. Song’s poetry is normally broken into two part poems of five stanzas which
are free verse. “Song’s greatest strength lies in this marvelous organic nature of
her imagery and in the complete fusion of form, image, occasion, and emotion.
Every poem is marked by this naturalness of form, based unpretentiously on
phrasal pauses or the breadth of a line, by an unforced storyline or ease of
observation; almost every poem has a sudden eruption of metaphor, which
startles, teases, illuminates.” This quote said by Shirley Lim shows how other
poets respect her style of poetry. Song’s poetry is not known for being AsianAmerican poetry as well as other Asian-American writers (“Cathy Song”,
Poetryfoundation.com). This is partly because she has stayed in her home-state of
Hawaii, after college, which has not allowed her poems to spread as much as
other poets on the mainland (Pao). But, she is the first Hawaiian to receive
national recognition. Song also does not want herself to be classified as an AsianAmerican writer. She even said, “I am just a poet who happens to be AsianAmerican.” (“Cathy Song”, Poetryfoundation.com
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Cathy Song: list of works
Poems
Adagio
Christmas Eve
Eat
Ikebana
Leaving
Litany
Out of Our Hands
Points of Reference
School Figures
Spaces We Leave
Empty
Square Mile
Stink Eye
Sun worshippers
The Age of Reptiles
The Grammar of Silk
The Hotel by the Lake
The Kindness of Others
The Man Moves Earth
The Tree House
The White Porch
The Window and the Field
The Youngest Daughter
Girl Powdering Her Neck
Untouched Photograph of a
Passenger
Handful
Lost Sister
Heaven
Water wings
Collections





Cloud Moving Hands
Frameless Windows, Squares of
Light
The Land of Bliss
School Figures
Picture Bride
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
The Kindness of Others
The kindness of others
by Cathy
is all they ever wanted,
the laughter of neighbors
prospering in the blue light of summer.
Those of the small sputtering flame
And the sudden white sprung hair,
Who feed off envy and grow old quickly,
Desire largesse.
The role of poor relation
Evokes a lack
They are not apt to admit,
Or unbearable pity.
They prefer to penetrate the giver’s
Effortless knack of giving
They perceive as vitality,
A pulsating entity
That rewards the kindness of others
Tenfold.
This they have witnessed.
This they have tabulated relentlessly.
The generosity of others
Whose spirits, like their long-legged
Children blossoming into a progeny
Of orchards and fields, flourish.
Song
Those who have never known kindness
Drag into the privacy of their smallness
The baskets of fruit
Appearing year after year on their porches,
To be picked apart
In the hushed posture of thieves.
They peel skin, probe flesh
The color of honey
As if the seeds will yield something
Other than a glimmer of sweet air
Rising from the roots of trees
And licorice-laces, half-opened leaves.
Those of the small flame,
Who feed off envy and grow old quickly,
Live out their lives
Hungry,
Glaring at themselves across the table,
Wife of the cruel mouth,
Husband of the thin broth
Trickling like spittle.
Analysis of The
Kindness of Others
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
The Kindness of Others: Analysis
In “The Kindness of Others,” Cathy Song shows how everyone, young or
old, must be kind and generous to everyone through free verse and imagery. She
explains how children are only nice to people if they are receiving gifts, but the
children never give to others. This leads to her saying, sooner or later, they won’t be
receivers since they were never givers. “Those of the small flame/who feed off envy
and grow old quickly/ live out their lives/ hungry/ Glaring at themselves across the
table/ wife of the cruel mouth/ husband of the thin broth/ trickling like spittle.” This
quote is a very obvious stab at the ones who expect to just keep receiving kindness
when they don’t give it. As they grow older, they never realize what they are doing
wrong and just live their life desiring the kindness of others. Those lines from the
poem also depict Song’s style of poetry. She uses free verse to really get the meaning
out of what she wants people to see. Song also really throws in a lot of imagery into
this poem. “To be picked apart/ in the hushed posture of thieves/ they peel skin, probe
flesh/ the color of honey” She uses imagery in this to allow people to see that not
being kind to people can cause others to be rude to you, too. Through Song’s free
verse and imagery, she really gets out the meaning behind being kind to others and
how important it is in the long run.
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Sample Poems
In the poem “Spaces We Left Empty,” by Cathy Song, she explains how
death can impact a family very hard. “The bracelet worn since my first birthday/ cracked
into thousand-year-old eggshells. / the sound could be heard/ ringing across the water.”
This line taken from the poem is just one of the ways Song used imagery to show how it
can shatter a life. The bracelet represents her as she heard the news of the death and
how she probably mourned so loud that anyone could hear. I thought this poem was very
well written in the way she wanted to get the meaning across. It doesn’t just come out
and say it, and it really makes you think about what you are reading.
Spaces We Left Empty by Cathy Song
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
The jade slipped from my wrist
with the smoothness of water
leaving the mountains,
silk falling from a shoulder,
melon slices sliding across the tongue,
the fish returning.
The bracelet worn since my first birthday
cracked into thousand-year-old eggshells.
The sound could be heard
ringing across the water
where my mother woke in her sleep crying
thief.
Her nightgown slapped in the wind
as he howled clutching his hoard.
The cultured pearls.
The bone flutes.
The peppermint disks of jade.
The clean hole
in the center, Heaven:
the spaces we left empty
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Sample Poems
In Cathy Song’s poem “Picture Bride,” she was writing about her own grandmother having
to come to America for an arranged marriage done completely by pictures. I chose this poem because it
had such a meaning behind the idea of the marriage. People now-a-days in America do not realize that
this was the life for other people back then and the women sometimes had no control over what they
could and couldn’t do. But sometimes, these things led to better opportunities for the women. “What
things did my grandmother/ take with her? And when/ she arrived to look/ into the face of the stranger/
who was her husband/ thirteen years older than she/ did she politely untie/ the silk bow of her jacket” I
thought this quote from the poem really brought the meaning together. How was a women supposed to
react when she saw her husband she’d never met before for the first time? Was it just another day in the
life of a Korean woman to act like that, or maybe this the start of something completely new for her.
Picture Bride by Cathy Song
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
She was a year younger
than I,
twenty-three when she left Korea.
Did she simply close
the door of her father's house
and walk away. And
was it a long way
through the tailor shops of Pusan
to the wharf where the boat
waited to take her to an island
whose name she had
only recently learned,
on whose shore
a man waited,
turning her photograph
to the light when the lanterns
in the camp outside
Waialua Sugar Mill were lit
and the inside of his room
grew luminous
from the wings of moths
migrating out of the cane stalks?
What things did my grandmother
take with her? and when
she arrived to look
into the face of the stranger
who was her husband,
thirteen years older than she,
did she politely untie
the silk bow of her jacket,
her tent-shaped dress
filling with the dry wind
that blew from the surrounding fields
where the men were burning the cane?
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Inspired Poems
Out of Our Hands by Cathy Song
Out of a hat
on a piece of paper
someone once gave me your
name.
a language borrowed
from the children I taught
who shivered in borrowed
coats.
Your name flew
out of my hand,
the black letters
Toward evening they
scattered
outside the school,
red-bricked and torn
dismantling the air
above the school.
I watched the letters
on the edge of Chinatown
I watched them disappear
into their lives,
form the bird
seeds of a language
I needed to know,
undisciplined like starlings,
they disappeared
in the broken shoes of the
wind.
Inspired Poem
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Inspired Poems
Memories by September Olsen
The memories will never fade,
Cruising through the Caribbean;
It’s a once in a lifetime experience.
To smell the freshness of the ocean air,
To hear to sound of the waves crashing,
To see the never-ending blue sea.
Staying up late, dancing, talking.
Having all the freedom you want.
Never wanting to go home.
Making new friends you’ll have forever,
Seeing places you might never see again,
Enjoying the warm ocean sun.
Excursions you’ll always appreciate,
Zip-lining through forests,
Parasailing through open seas.
It’s like a dream now to me,
Re-thinking the fun times I had,
Yet, the memories will never fade.
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Inspired Poems
Points of Reference by Cathy Song
It was like falling through a mirror
into someone else’s story,
the years when the children were small.
Your mother’s story perhaps
of falling into a lake
at the edge of summer
when you were still in the stars,
waiting to be borne across the water,
her body, leaf-light,
skimming across the tar-green water,
thick as the well water
where the blind trout lived.
As children you knew he lived there,
swallowed into the sunless shaft,
his tail a blunt and soft propeller
stirring the velvet water.
Inspired Poem
Sleep wrapped in water
and moss-green fur,
summer nights you climbed the hill
to peer into the dark,
listening for your name
as it fell like a coin into the well.
Somewhere between desire and
acceptance—
blossoms of water
opening at the sound of you—
your eyes grew accustomed to the dark.
When you were still in the stars,
she’d say of a time before you were born,
as if the world, the animals and the trees
and the light within it were dark and
prehistoric.
You wanted to believe there existed
Biography
Inspired Poems
List of Works
Keep Going by September Olsen
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
It was like falling through a mirror
Our hopes shattered into a million pieces,
Our endless hours of hard-work, crushed.
How can we save ourselves now?
All of our dedication now must shine,
there was nothing to do but keep going.
It was like falling through a mirror
That moment I realized something was
wrong.
Was this really happening?
It felt like I was stuck in my own scary movie
With nowhere to turn, nowhere to run.
There’s nothing I could do but keep going.
It was like falling through a mirror,
But I knew my team felt the same,
We were all hoping for a miracle,
For another glitch or just pure silence.
But nothing ever came.
There was nothing to do but keep going.
It was like falling through a mirror,
Until a courageous teammate shined through,
She screamed the counts out,
Hoping everyone would catch on.
The nightmare was over,
Because now, all we wanted was to keep going.
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Original Poems
Beyond Love by September Olsen
Dancing is a feeling more than any other.
The adrenaline rush,
The crowd cheering.
I wish the feeling would last forever,
The feeling as if no one can stop you,
The feeling as if you’re the only one in the room.
To be on that floor has more meaning than the words in a dictionary,
For the dancer, it’s expressing your emotions through movement,
For the audience, it’s like reading the most enchanting story and not wanting it
to end.
That moment when you first step foot on the dance floor,
That moment when the crowd explodes with energy,
That moment when you hear the first beat of music,
It’s beyond dancing,
Beyond love,
It’s the passion.
Biography
Original Poems
List of Works
Champion by September Olsen
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
There’ll always be those practices
When you want to give up,
And just quit trying.
There’ll always be those practices
When you feel exhausted
And just want to stop.
There’ll always be that one practice,
That you just want to end
And never come back
But it’s at these practices,
When giving up is not an option,
When you need to try your hardest,
It’s at these practices,
When you need to push through those last moves,
When you need to keep going,
No matter how tough it gets.
And it’s because of these practices
That you go on that floor and look better than anyone else.
And it’s because of those practices,
That you can proudly say,
“I Am the Champion”
Biography
List of Works
Sample Poems
Inspired Poems
Original Poems
Bibliography
Bibliography
Biography info:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/cathy-song
http://apa.si.edu/Curriculum%20Guide-Final/songbio.htm
http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/song-cathy
http://asianamericanpoetry.blogspot.com/2006/12/poetry-of-cathy-song.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/cathy-song#
pictures:
http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/song-cathy
http://www.tower.com/picture-bride-cathy-song-paperback/wapi/101247911
http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Moving-Hands-Pitt-Poetry/dp/images/0822960001
http://www.paperbackswap.com/Land-Bliss-Cathy-Song/book/0822957701/
http://www.paperbackswap.com/School-Figures-Pitt-Cathy-Song/book/0822955172/
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-object.html
http://www.seascanner.com/schiff.php?schiff=Carnival+Glory
http://alleventstrophy.com/catalog.asp?prodid=715994&showprevnext=1
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-broken-mirror-image8073673
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/read/19575