The Thirteenth Lake

Turn to any page in Vida Chu's new book The Thirteenth Lake, and you are in for a surprise. An inflatable Buddha has wishes tied to oranges hanging from a banyan tree, shimmying grannies in the park, nursery web spiders in bridal veils, Bruce Lee cha-cha-ing, St. Genevieve with grass growing out of her head, the Dali Lama in a Princeton baseball cap, and ostrich-like vultures. Vida Chu reminds us that the world is a mysterious and magical place, a place of light but also of shadows. "Tiu jin bat ho nang" shouts the blind dragon boat rowers in her poem "The Darkness Fighters," to "Challenge the impossible." Vida's poems give us the courage to do so. She has good role models in her fearless grandchildren of whom she writes with such affection. "Life, like a pencil, needs constant sharpening, / and with a little shading, / a circle can be turned into a sphere." The Thirteenth Lake offers us full-dimensional, nuanced poems, life sharpened with wit and grace. In a pivotal poem in this enchanting book we are presented with a temple dancer, with a crown of white jasmine, an apricot silk blouse, and silver ankle bells, "she the go-between of heaven and earth." If any poet was our go-between of heaven and earth, it is Vida Chu.

Christopher Bursk, author of Improbable Swervings of Atoms