Chinatown Ghosts

Martin Singleton was a poet living in Toronto.

This is the first book by Hong Kong-born Vancouver resident Wong-Chu. His many years of working in restaurants are reflected by both metaphors and actual poems about that experience. Some of these (“jimmy the waiter”) are slight, while others flesh out very well: “pender street east” talks convincingly of the joys of eating. Wong-Chu is also a photographer and many poems are visually oriented.

The diction is sometimes uneven: the effectiveness of several poems is undercut by such cheap puns as “deep fried vietnam.” “hippo luck” combines interesting phrases (“i am a miner of the mountain of gambling gold”) with poor ones (“the dance floor whirled a common dish / we danced a pair of common fish”). But much language is exciting: “each withered word,” “ate chinook” (starved), “feet moving in tandem / weave like roving timid eyes.” Occasionally diction becomes visual: “WWWOWWWW TURN ME ON” or auditory: “PAK PAK of his heart.”

There is throughout this book, as suggested by the title, a deep reverence for those who have gone before, the workers “sometimes solitary / sometimes / blood spattered / / sweating / and singing.” Poems such as “the newspaper vending kwan yin” and “scenes from the mon sheong home for the aged” reveal both empathy and craft.

The opening poem of Chinatown Ghosts depicts a leaf-wrapped bundle of rice opening: just so this poet gives us both feeling and craft. This is a good first book.