In Adamantine, the poet explores the strength of stone and spirit, disarming hardness to explore the power of the human spirit to transform itself through adversity. Drawn from global news stories, the subjects of these poems range from the tallest man in the world, an Olympic medalist, and a burning monk to a family stranded in the Oregon wilderness. An ongoing investigation of the poet’s interest in the visual arts, a suite of poems contemplates the work of Goya, Warhol, Rothko, Cornell, and Calder, as well as master artists and craftsmen from the Eastern traditions.

“The freshness, luster, and charm of these poems derive not only from a superb and seemingly easeful craftsmanship, but indelibly from a generous infusion of the poet’s good heart.”  

                                    —Mike O'Connor   

 “Shin Yu Pai’s new collection Adamantine bristles with taut, startling language that continues to yield surprises even after readers realize that they are at serious play within the fields of the human heart, a realm in which "we must know when to give in." Diverse personae inhabit these poems, rendering insight into their traumas, sacrifices, and psychic pathos: from the "ruined man in a wheelchair" strapped in place on a city bus; to the Chinese migrant worker who suffered a brain hemorrhage that left her comatose, and who was almost cremated alive because her family couldn’t afford her hospital care; to the Vietnamese Buddhist monk immolating himself in protest at Indochinese oppression, "his heart refusing to burn"–this line repeated thrice like a mantra or prayer. This is poetry of compassion and clarity that "sees past the icon" as the poet makes a journey to China to explore her own ambivalence toward "traditions that constitute / a personal inheritance." These poems, "incised with oracle / markings" whose urgency is heightened in the poet’s ancestral legacy, both "crush illusion" and take "the Buddha back to his origins." Reading these poems, we are gratified that the poet has "come / to make this offering" of language to us.”

–Carolyne Wright

“The heart of these poems broke open even before this poet was born.  Shin Yu Pai has maintained a practice to keep it this way, so that she and all of us might live in that open, compassionate field with neither boundary nor end.  How wise of her to know that what is adamantine is the open heart. Fearless seeing, ancient mutterings on contemporary pathways and boulevards, inventive poetics, merciless memories and tender, knowing hands all take their proper place here, where she finds “every event a mirror / of mind & heart.”  Her eyes will help you open what you’ve held onto too tightly, too long, and her heart will open the rest of you from the first word to the last.”

—Peter Levitt

Practice

Pema Norbu Gompo

shares with me a story:

at reaching thirty

thousand prostrations,

glancing into the vanity

to see a trimmed down

waist w/out love

handles – starting over

from zero, more than

once to better

polish his intent

my own practice:

carving holes in

poetry books w/

exacto blade & straight

edge, intervention as

design concept

a hole too uneven

a hole too big

a hole too ragged

a hole too small

every event a mirror

of mind & heart,

imperfect despite

a template for success,

but isn’t there

only this work?

day after day

heaps of words piling

up on my writing desk

Shin Yu Pai, born in 1975, is a second-generation Taiwanese-American poet and photographer. She grew up in Southern California and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with additional graduate level studies conducted at the Naropa Institute where she received the Hiro Yamagata and Zora Neale Hurston Scholarships. Currently, she is assistant curator for the Wittliff Collections.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of structure of the inner ear (Cinematheque Press, forthcoming), Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn Artists Alliance, 2008), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks, 2007), Sightings: Selected Works [2000-2005] (1913 Press, 2007), The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz, 2006), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed), 2005), Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003), and Ten Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (Third Ear Books, 1998). Her work is anthologized in America Zen: A Gathering of Poets (Bottom Dog Press) and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publications).

 In addition to her work as a poet, Shin Yu has exhibited her visual work at The Paterson Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, and The Three Arts Club of Chicago. She has collaborated with individual artists and groups as diverse as Hedwig Dances and the Hudson Exploited Theater Company.