【About the Book】

 

American poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

 

Yu-Hsuan Wu’s poetry embodies this piercing chill: at once violent and tender.

 

She is not merely a poet, but a sorceress whose spells take the form of transparent language that cuts straight into the abyss of emotion. She understands the futility of love, and also the omnipotent illusion it brings. She obsessively asks: If love is not the most violent, most shameful, and most sweet form of extortion, then what is it?

 

She writes: One must learn to accept the passage of time—but every time you fall in love, don’t think about the end. Just burn like a flame.

 

This collection captures moments of passionate love, of being shattered by love, of rib-for-rib exchange. In these moments, fracture and wholeness become indistinguishable, as if love and death sprang from the same origin.

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【Author’s Note】

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When I was in Japan studying Butoh, I would often sit in Kazuo Ohno’s rehearsal hall. His beloved white wooden chair remained there, even though he had already passed away.

 

The chair sat quietly on the floor, beside a tilted photo: Kazuo Ohno, aged and withered, seated deep in that very chair, his gaze turned away from the audience. His death-marked body faced the empty theater above, arms flung open under the stage lights like a crescent moon cradling the stars.

 

It felt as though he were using his body to summon the hidden truth of all mute existence, just as “poetry” embraces something that struggles out from the ordinary.

 

I carry on the presence of things that allude to the nonexistent. I become them. When weary of looking up, I curl myself inward, forehead to womb, rubbing lightly. Then I resume human form, return to the posture where my head has nowhere to go, waiting for the upper void to open so I can recite, word for word. Until the words curl me up again—and finally, I have somewhere to go.

 

Like Rilke, I want to return to words their original meanings—and return to things their original word.

 

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【Selected Poem】

 

The Still Object of Kazuo Ohno

 

 

The still object Kazuo Ohno caressed is already growing old

The golden cicada shell outside the window still hangs in the air

The white chair he treasured has tumbled from the photo

Falling smoothly to the center of the room

Whenever I go past it 

I have the urge to nudge it with my foot

And see what happens

But I figure the chair is too heavy

Would be ever so hard to move

Nor does anyone dare sit down there

Seeing he still occupies his white chair

Engrossed in the problem of turning himself to air

 

Now and then he rises and goes into a corner

Opens the black piano disappointed to find

He has never been able to play the music that fills his ear

Not that he minds

Sitting on the floor

Overturning the basket of paper flowers

Restoring the colored paper to its original form

Then slowly bending back

He folds himself into just such a flower

For just such a basket

 

​​​​​Now and then he stretches himself again

Saunters to the bookcase by the door

Leafs through a volume of Monet

Observes the clouds’ reflections in the lotus pond

Gather and disperse about the sky

In the end

In the end he never forgets to return

To his beloved white chair which

Like some ordinary household object imparts a touch of languor

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(Translated by Steve Bradbury, published in Plume Poetry Magazine, 2023)

Listen to the poet read it here​

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【Reviews & Reflections】

 

“You have invented the art of pain. You gaze directly into the origin of hell and its human branches. Your poetry stages a secret performance where every word carries the weight of pain. The rib is a mysterious key that pierces through flesh to reach life—or, like a second god, you transform your lover into your own rib.”

—Shen Mian, “Reading Exchanging Lover’s Ribs”

 

“Saturated with emotional intensity and cinematic beauty, Wu’s debut reveals a pilgrim’s passion—not for sacred sites or transcendent miracles, but for a particular kind of art, and for love, family, and desire. Her poetic gift, refined through intensive classical training, enables her to render the subtlest emotions with seductive precision.”
 

—Yu-Cheng Liao, “The Aesthetic Pilgrimage of Desire”

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【Performance Record】

 

Exchanging Lover’s Ribs—A Cross-Disciplinary Poetry Performance

 

This live project extended ten poems from the collection into ten interdisciplinary performance forms. This performance sought to blur the boundaries between poetry and embodiment, extending language into gesture, ritual, and visual metaphor. It exemplifies Yu-Hsuan Wu’s practice of transforming deeply personal, emotional landscapes into collective, multisensory experiences—where poetry is no longer confined to the page, but lived, seen, and felt.

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