How to not be afraid of everything

Wong (Overpour) explores loss, grief, migration, colonization, and alienation in her searching and resilient second collection. "To be a good daughter means to carry everything with you at all times," she writes, enacting the heavy burden of carrying, where "Sometimes there is nothing to say or/ give at all." The works interrogate the Maoist Great Leap Forward, which resulted in 36 million deaths due to starvation, as well as question America, where the speaker wonders: "can't I have what I've been/ promised? This shore and this sea,/ shining always, thereafter?" Wong's poems subvert conventional ideas about America: "And what is there/ to see," Wong asks before answering, "rusty shipping containers." There's also a pointed critique of excesses of wealth set in a world where "we watch banks being built on ancient/ ground," and "hurricanes have/ the name of any decent receptionist." Wong's powerful poems draw the reader's attention and insist the audience not look away. (Oct.)

An opening note to Wong's second collection (after Overpour) describes the Maoist campaign known as the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths from famine in the People's Republic of China between 1958 and 1962; Wong dedicates a poem to members of her family who went missing or died in the famine. In many ways, the entire collection converses with ghosts, whether through invocation of the "good daughter," address of an absent gambler father, or the thematically resonant invocation of food and its decay. One of the best poems links superficially disparate lines, giving readers the sense of connecting a puzzle from its outer pieces in. For instance, "Everything" introduces toxic boars in Japan, a fork as potential weapon, and an admonition to suspect men who call from balconies, all of which reappear, woven into a poetic whole linking family, xenophobia, cultural assimilation, and the past. Not a spare word remains. Frequent poetry readers will appreciate the formal diversity of the collection and its use of empty space. A poem might appear as hyphenated phrases in a paragraph, in Mad Libs style, or as simple enjambed free verse. VERDICT The collection often surprises in its playfulness or self-deprecation, given the weight of the poems' subject matter, and is a solid addition to poetry collections.--Amy Dickinson, Montrose Regional Lib. District, CO