In Stem, Stella Wong intersperses lyric poems on a variety of subjects with dramatic monologues that imagine the perspectives of specific female composers, musicians, and visual artists, including Johanna Beyer, Mira Calix, Clara Rockmore, Maryanne Amacher, and Delia Derbyshire. In such lines as “let me tell you how I make myself appear / more likeable,” “as I grow older I like looking at chaos,” and “I want to propose a hike / and also propose mostly,” Wong’s style is confident and idiomatic, and by turns contemplative and carefree. Whether writing about family, intimate relationships, language, or women’s experience, Wong creates a world alive with observation and provocation, capturing the essence and the problems of life with others.
Stella Wong is the author of the poetry collection Spooks and the chapbook American Zero. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Los Angeles Review of Books, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, and Bennington Review.
"Perceptive and gripping. . . . [Stem is] an impressive series of dramatic monologues. . . As Wong dips in and out of various personae, her biting cleverness remains consistent throughout. These insistent poems achieve a brash and beautiful irreverence."—Publishers Weekly
"Stem is full of colour and candour."—David Marx, David Marx Book Reviews
“The poems in this volume demonstrate an extraordinary sensibility, which is imaginative, perceptive, and intrepid. Reading these poems is like riding a verbal roller coaster, full of excitement and surprises.”—Ha Jin, author of The Woman Back from Moscow and A Distant Center
“Stella Wong’s Orpheus is female, and the poet herself a forceful Eurydice who refuses to return to the underground and play dead. She’s a switched-on, savvy, confident, aggressively witty, and get-out-of-the-way poet. American poetry needs her fighting spirit. Nodding to experimental women composers of the ’60s and forward, Wong herself has a taste of the synthesizer’s surrealism. She goes where her uncaptured nature and her powers of observation take her.”—Cal Bedient, author of The Breathing Place
