Of Marilyn Chin and Turtle Soup...

Last Wednesday, we learnt on poem Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin. The poem contains 6 stanzas and is free verse. It was written by Chin in 1994. When Dr. Haslina first asked Sara Syafia to do the honour of reading the poem aloud, the poem is sounded quite sad. As if a little of poet heritage has gone and she was mourning through the poem with questions and flashbacks.

          Before I explores further of the text, let me write a little about the poet behind the poem, Marilyn Chin.

        

  Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong but later raised in Portland, Oregon. With American background of knowledge, she began writing poetry and published numerous volumes of them. Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classroom across the world. Some of them include: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002); The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty (1994); and Dwarf Bamboo (1987). Besides that, she also happened to write a novel titled, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (2009).

          Chin has won awards from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her works also has been featured in a variety of anthologies such as The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Unsettling America, The Open Boat, and The Best American Poetry of l996. Although she has settled down in America, Chin took the chance attending and workshops all over the world and was guest poet at universities around Singapore, Hong Kong, Manchester, Sydney, Berlin and many more.

          Through the exploration of the poem Turtle Soup, my friends and I were to notice Chin’s choice of the word “Cauldron” in line 4 instead of pot. It could be because of the sense of traditional values that the mother wanted to keep while cooking for the family. Cauldron is a very large pot used for boiling but they are the traditional ones used in classic films like in the Chinese movies and witch stories. From this observation, it can be said that Marilyn Chin wanted to preserve the custom since she came from Chinese lineages, and Chinese people are known of their sacred traditionalism.

          In this poem, Chin also refers to ‘the Wei’, the Yellow’ and ‘the Yangtze’, referring to rivers in China and a quest to why not include other rivers arose. These rivers have strong connection to the symbol of a turtle itself. They are among the longest rivers in China, some are the ancient ones ever discovered, and what does a turtle represents? A symbol of longevity, patience, grandeur and antiquity. The rivers and turtle in the poem interconnected a lot for the poet and that is why she chose to name the rivers as such from China instead of those in other places.  

          Last but not least, I would personally identify the tone of the poem as melancholy. The poet was trying to tell the mother at the first stanza then throughout the whole poem to her mother of their Chinese mythological symbol – turtle. The tone also becomes haunting at the end of the poem as Chin begins to question “Is there nothing left but the shell?” as to create awareness on losing the population of the unique creature in the future for next generation.

               

"Marilyn Chin." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2014