“How I Got That Name”
“One Child Has Brown Eyes”
“Shadowless Shadow”
“ADVICE (for E)”
Conversation with Joseph Ross
“The Floral Apron”
“Blues on Yellow”
On this page:
Acclaim
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I praise Marilyn Chin’s poetry everywhere I go. – Gwendolyn Brooks
- I can’t imagine a more compelling collection of poems centered on the difficult gift of racial and cultural “double consciousness.” – June Jordan
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Even as Chin laments, she heals. Even as she protests and berates, she disarms. As she bemoans the violent treatment of women, she evokes sisterhood. With biting sarcasm and caustic tone (just two of the weapons in her rhetorical arsenal), she makes individual despair an allegory for society’s ills, in a larger process of unifying opposites, formally joining East with West. – Henry Louis Gates, Chair of the Anisfield Wolf Book Award
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(Marilyn Chin) is bad-ass, and that’s good. – Sandra Cisneros
- As one of the most prolific and admired Asian American writers on the poetry scene today, Marilyn keeps readers guessing as each of her successive publications showcases new poetic strategies of what we might call — for lack of an appropriate, dictionary-backed adjective — her fusionary poetics. – American Book Review
Recognition
- 2025 Poets in Residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace
- 2022-2023 Holmes Poetry Chair, Princeton University
- 2021 Louis D. Rubin Writer-in-Residence, Hollins University
- 2020 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
- 2018-2024 Chancellor of the Academy of American Poetry
- 2018 Field-McKenna Distinguished University Professor, DuPauw University
- 2017 California Assembly Recognition for Activism and Excellence in Education
- 2016 Conkling Poetry Chair, Smith College
Interviews
2024
I always tell my students that form and content can work together or against each other in fascinating vibrant ways; just keep reading and writing and practicing and loving the art. – Oxford Review of Books with Jennifer Wong
2023
- I, myself, heard slurs during the pandemic. A deranged person yelled: “Go back to China” and lunged toward me with drug-fueled rage. I saw pure hate in his eyes. Once again, the Asian community is being scapegoated. We did not steal your railroad jobs at Rock Springs. We did not invent the virus; I have always battled racism and sexism in my poems; now, damn it all, I also must battle ageism. The activist poet can’t get any rest! – Poetry Society of America with Thi Nguyen
2020
- The first kind of poetry I heard was Chinese poetry, and it ingrained in my ear, even though English is my main language. I can hardly read Chinese. The Chinese poem was ingrained in me when I was very young. You can hear the Cantonese language in my work. The Chineseness is in the DNA of my work. I can’t divorce it from my work. I can’t say I forget it. – Asian Review of Books with Jennifer Wong
- I have often said that the self in my poems represents something larger than the self: family, tribe, nation(s), globe, multiple histories. Identity is a non-static thing, a dynamic adventure. Hopefully, we continue to blossom, grow, transform as persons and as writers. – Poetry Foundation with Sally Wen Mao
2015
- I am not afraid of my “Chineseness” and I’m not afraid of my “Americanness.” I begin the day reading Li Bai, Tu Fu, the Shijing. Some of us have to do this. It’s very important to me that I leave that mark, that I write this hybrid poetry. I want to showcase the brilliance of both literary traditions. – Los Angeles Review of Books with Irene Hsiao.
- The problem with contemporary poetry is that lots of poets shy away from form or shy away from musicality, so I wanted the book to be based on the elegiac quatrain, which is mimetic of Eastern and Western quatrains, so you can hear Chinese poetry but you can also hear Tennyson. – Fresno State MFA with Carleigh Takemoto.
2014
- I pay homage to many teachers and muses. It’s time to give gratitude. We’ve lost some important poets in California: I miss the mentorship of Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Wanda Coleman, and others. “Live worthily and die bravely.” Yes, I am still that activist poet. – Poetry Flash with Ken Weisner.
- I am inspired by the rich global history of poetry. But as an artist, one who “makes” the work, I am thinking about form and variations, and the craft of making a poem – Oxford Journals with Nissa Parmar
- The landscape is ever-shifting, the tonal range can move quickly from playfulness, to deep sorrow, to in-your-face-anger, to humor, to hot sex, to comic absurdity, to didactic finger pointing, to zen stillness, to the macabre – American Book Review with Anastasia Turner
- The quatrain and the ballad are versatile and beloved forms that are here to stay. I listened to folk songs from all over the world, work songs, blues songs, and rap – Poets and Writers
- Podcast by Poets and Writers on Soundcloud
2012
2009
- BBC PRI The World with Patrick Cox – audio podcast
- Tripmaster with Bryan Thao Worra
- Voices from the Gaps, Asian American Press Interview with Bryan Thao Worra
2005
- Hamline University with Patricia Kirkpatrick and Rita Moe
- Meridians
2004
- Bloomsbury Review with Thom Tammaro
2002
Videos
- One Child Has Brown Eyes at Oregon Public Broadcasting and Poets and Writers
- From HLP at The Grolier Bookstore
- About Ai Ogawa at the LA Library
- Brown Girl Manifesto at CSUSB, with commentary
- Monologue: Grandmother Wong’s New Year Blessings at CSUSB
- Parable of the Cake at CSUSB
- From HLP at ECAASU’14
- Floral Apron at Poetry Everywhere
- Bad Date at Dodge Poetry Festival
- Barbarian Sweet at UCTV
- Blues on Yellow at Dear Poet project 2019
Poems Online
- How I Got That Name at Poets.org
- Blues on Yellow at Library of Congress
- Advice (for E) at Poets.org
- Chinese Quatrains at Poetry Foundation
- One Child Has Brown Eyes at Poets.org
- Shadowless Shadow at Poets.org
- Bamboo, the Dance at NYTimes
- The Floral Apron at Poets.org
- Tienanmen, the Aftermath at Library of Congress
- Brown Girl Manifesto (Too) at Poetry Foundation
- Twenty-Five Haiku at Poetry Foundation
- from Two Inch Fables at Poets.org
- Alba: Moon Camellia Lover, Brown Girl Manifesto (Too), Beautiful Boyfriend, One Child Has Brown Eyes, Black President, Twenty Five Haiku at Poets and Writers
- Turtle Soup at Norma Lisa
- “Alter (#3)” from “Broken Chord Sequence” at Poetry Foundation
Places to find more poems:
Essays on Marilyn’s Work
- Marilyn Chin 101: A poet of formidable intellect and formal virtuosity by Benjamin Voigt
- Mocking My Own Ripeness: Authenticity, Heritage, and Self-Erasure in the Poetry of Marilyn Chin by John Gery
- Irony’s Barbarian Voices in the Poetry of Marilyn Chin by Dorothy J. Wang
- Love, Eroticism, Grief, and Time in Marilyn Chin’s Hard Love Province by Catherine Cucinella
- Versions of Identity in Post-Activist Asian American Poetry by George Uba
- Marilyn Chin: Poet, Translator, Provocateur by John Yau
- Of Grievance and Grief: Marilyn Chin by Abigail Licad
- American experience, for better or worse by Elizabeth Lund
- Broken Chord by Irene C. Hsiao
- Rhapsody in Plain Yellow for a perpetual Immigrant Nation by Jean Larson
- Being Without by Adrienne McCormick
- Otherness and Assimilation by Katherine Kidder
- Necessary Figures by Dorothy Wang
- How I Got This Thesis by Spencer Schenk-Wasson
- The Great Matriarch by Tarisa Matsumoto