Joy and Sadness Tanka

The Great Gatsby

turning 100 sparks joy

and sadness ...

my bookworm friend laments,

this desire for more, more, more

NeverEnding Story, April 14 2025

FYI: The Great Gatsby, which turned a hundred last week, is a novel about excess: about the glitzy, rowdy parties of the Jazz Age and the beautiful people that attended them; about vanity and class; and about the insatiable American desire for more ...( The New Yorker, April 9: "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Life in Drinks") 

And the following tanka could be read as an example of this insatiable American desire for more articulated in The Great Gatsby:

alone 

by the penthouse window

my friend repeats 

this is America

why settle for pretty good? 

NeverEnding Story, September 19 2022

A Life in Transition and Translation

My Dear Friends:

I was notified that my haiku chapbook, A Life in Transition and Translation, won a Honorable Mention in the fourth Turtle Light Press biennial haiku chapbook competition, 2014. In celebration of the Double Ten Taiwan National Day, here is a free PDF copy of A Life in Transition and Translation for your reading pleasure.

Many thanks for your continued support of my writing.

Chen-ou 

Updated, October 13:

Commentary by the judge, Penny Harter

In this collection we enter the life of being an immigrant, feel the loneliness of being between worlds, and the questions and challenges that arise from that experience. One must learn a new language, a new landscape, and a new culture. The immigrant is at first cast adrift, never really at home, but never really in exile, either.

winter rain
I fall asleep
holding myself

We don’t have to be a stranger in a strange land to feel this degree of loneliness, but being one makes it all the more poignant.

budding lotus
when did I become
who I am

When any of us have experienced a shift from one land to another, whether chosen or forced upon us, this is a question we find ourselves asking more than once. I know I have been asking it often since my husband died and I only moved from north to south Jersey.

first homecoming . . .
the silence lengthened
tree by tree

And when we try to go home, we are changed, so home is changed. The silence, the trees . . . how do we bridge the gap? And what self are we bringing home again?

last cherry petals
drift to the ground
I miss myself

As we are becoming, day by day, our “new” selves, we miss the old, but can’t go back. And that’s the way it is. But we go on! This is a collection that makes us recognize the changes we must make—and, if we are immigrants, the changes are even more profound. 

Following the Moon to the Maple Land

Book Review by Kathy Uyen Nguyen

Here is an excerpt:

Liu's "Preface" is unlike any other prefaces I've read out there; it is a haibun that captures his sense of self-identity and reality as if they are balancing on scales. Consider the following excerpt:

My mind can't find a resting place except writing poetry - the only way I can manipulate the reality of my life in Canada.

It is evident that Liu's hometown is in Taipei, Taiwan, yet in this haibun, there is much more room for readjustment to his new life in Canada. This story is shared by many of us (including relatives and friends) who are immigrants as we know that it is a lifelong process of letting go, yet still remembering one's own motherland wherever that may be. The only thing that is constant and ironically stationary in Liu's life is his poetry writing.

Speaking of Liu's hometown, I absolutely love the diction and the continuity of the images in this following haiku:

    peeling my pear

    in a thin, unbroken spiral ...

    hometown memories

This haiku evokes nostalgia and is simply beautiful. The reader can imagine that both the peeling pear and Liu's hometown memories are all in an "unbroken spiral." I love the fusion between human nature ("memories") and nature ("pear").

Liu also demonstrates versatility and skill in one-line haiku such as the following selections:

    slowly I eat up a spring day quickly dissolving

    ***

    single married single again a rushing river

In "[slowly]," the reader can see that the speaker of the haiku is eating up "a spring day" with the first reading, but at the same time or with the second reading, it is noted as the spring day being quickly dissolved while the speaker is eating something. Either way, I love the ambiguity and gustatory experience of this one-like haiku.

In "[single]," this reminds me of tributaries that all flow and merge together to become one big river. There is irony in the human experience when it comes to relationships (e.g., divorces, breakups, marriages, etc.): we go through these changing phases of relationships as if we are small streams ourselves trying to flow into one big river in the name of love. The middle part of the haiku with "single again" works like a hinge. It could be that the speaker of this haiku is "single again" or is experiencing once "again a rushing river" as in a rush of emotions.....

Read its full text here

Broken/Breaking English: Selected Short Poems, is now available through Lulu .

eBook, 61 Pages, Price: $7.00
A Room of My Own Press, c2012.
ISBN: 978-0-9868947-1-8

Book Review of My Chapbook

A Hundred Gourds just published Book Review: Following the Moon to the Maple Land by John McManus, British poet and Expositions Editor

The following is an excerpt:

As you can tell from the poem Chen-ou's move from [Taiwan] to Canada has left him feeling trapped between the opposing cultures of his past and his present.

the bat

flitting here and there . . .

Chen-ou or Eric

wordless

in my borrowed tongue

plum blossoms

In the first poem Liu tries to find a way out of his cultural dislocation by giving himself a new English name, but in the second poem he demonstrates how despite his efforts he still feels very much an outsider in his adopted home.

an African man

holds out his hands . . .

snowflakes

Here Liu identifies with another traveller and skilfully captures a profound moment of their experience in a land which is harsh but beautiful.

to tell or not to tell the secret day moon

See the full text here, A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

My Chapbook Just Came Out

My book, Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize Winner of the Spring 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest), just came out. 

Publisher: Haiku Pix Productions

ISBN: 978-986-86788-3-5
Cover Concept: Tad Wojnicki
Cover Photo: Christine, L. Villa
Cover Design: Marie Jo Kasprzak
Price: U. S. 10; CAN 15.95

You are one of the most lyric haikuists in our worldwide haiku family. You have the gift of tugging at our hearts. I can see why so many of your haiku have won awards.

-- Neal Whitman, renowned American poet

Ripples from a Splash

My book, Ripples from a Splash: A Collection of Haiku Essays with Award-Winning Haiku, is now available through Lulu .

Ripples from a Splash:
A Collection of Haiku Essays with Award-Winning Haiku

By Chen-ou Liu

A Room of My Own Press, c2011.

Ebook, 131 pages, ISBN: 978-0-9868947-0-1

I like Chen-ou Liu’s poetry. His haiku resonates the Asian spirit, and makes use of aesthetics in a continuum of time that is permanent and impermanent; the process more important than the subjective specificity of object bias found in most Anglo-Western haiku like poems. His poetry demand to be interpreted by the informed reader. They do not tell all, are not based on an “aha” moment, and have no definitive ending. More importantly they give meaning and voice to the unsaid, the magic inherent in Japanese poetry.

-- Review by Robert D. Wilson, Editor-in-chief of Simply HaikuNote: my book can be viewed online