Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.
Celeste NgRead
A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up - sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a flower, and sometimes with a quick knife-slice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A good poem encapsulates profound emotions and moments, impacting the reader deeply and uniquely.
In this quote, Celeste Ng highlights the extraordinary nature of a good poem, describing it as a distilled moment that can evoke strong feelings. It can gently unfold its meaning or deliver a sudden impact, similar to a flower's blossoming or a sharp cut, emphasizing poetry's ability to resonate with the human experience in varied and impactful ways.
Themes
PoetryArtEmotionExperienceImpact
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a poetry reading to highlight the significance of the art form.
More from Celeste Ng
All quotes →Spend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.
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For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.
Celeste NgRead
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.
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What I remember about race relations in the 1990s is that you showed your awareness by saying you didn't see race, that you were colour-blind.
Celeste NgRead
In fiction you're not often writing about the typical; you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour... another part comes from my personality: I'm an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.
Celeste NgRead
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The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst
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