Perplexed Skin by Patrick Cotter

Abstract

poems. Yearn Hong Choi landed in Seattle in 1968, a poor, young Korean man who came to town with only seventy dollars and ambition in his pocket. His autobiographical verse serves to remind us that we can't go home again and expect to find itunchanged. Yearn Hong Choi tells us about himselfin dealing with the vagaries of life, and his poems illuminatehuman experiences by their connectedness to those questions: who we are, where we are, and where we should be. A gentleness of spiritpervades thewistful memories of family in a series of poems: "Name," "Photo Album," "Departing," and "Mother and Dove." This same gentleness of spirit sees the sublimity and beau ty in the natural world. He loves the woods in all seasons. The trees give comfort even while human kind interrupts their space. There is frequent reference to the sea, and it is both a cause of uncertainty and a path to a new life,yet he yearns for the solidity of land. This land becomes palpable in poems of the Arizona and New Mexico desert. This same western landscape, from which he sees the expansiveness of the universe, at times overwhelms the poet and leaves him speechless. The only thing the readermay not be sure of is the rationale for the order inwhich the poems are presented. There may be a chrono logical order inwhich he has revis ited the places and scenes. Yearn Hong Choi uses language that is simple and direct inpoems thatare accessible to the general reader. His metaphors come from the eye and the ear. What holds thisbook togetheris its collection of images and memories thatgivemeaning to life. He asks the big questions on the mysteries of life onwhich we all reflectfromtime to time.Yearn Hong Choi tellsus about himself indealing with thevagaries of life, and his poems illuminate human experiences by their con nectedness to those questions: who we are, where we are, and where we should be. He keeps returningtohis homeland and memories of family, to the familyhome, his grandmother in thepotato fieldsof Idaho, his chil dren, retirement, and always back to Korea, as in the beautiful lines of "To Koh Choong-suk," where he remembers: "Li Po drank alone by themoonlight / but I drank all night long next to you. /We were twohappy drunkards in the world." As thispoet navigates the regions of our feelings and emotions, he stops to look while the rest of us drive on by. /. Glenn Evans Seattle, Washington Patrick Cotter. Perplexed Skin. Gal way, Ireland. Arlen House. (Syracuse University Press, distr.). 2008. 96 pages. $19.95. isbn978-1-903631-54-6 Often sexually frank, and sometimes incomprehensible, Patrick Cotter's poems have great aspirations but don't surrender easily. The best of Cotter's writing is solid poetry, intensely imagist,and speaks deeply and sincerely to real and universal human concerns. In a poem called "Such Things Do Happen," he sketches people as glimpsed on passing trains in an intense second-person narrative. As trains come and go, so the pas sengers live inparallel but divorced lives. At a fleeting station break, "a solitarywoman / ofdefinitivebeau ty" shares an intimate, sympathetic gaze with "you." Then gone, the transient trains resume their lone ly courses, and the transcendence shared for a moment is lost for ever. This and other gems are subtle and beautiful chamber plays, rich vignettes scattered throughout the realworld, which, as he eloquently puts it, are "operas, narratives we shall never know." But theworst bits of this collec tion are a series of trite sex scenes, offering an indulgent view of the poet's experience. The young female speaker of "Ovid's Elegy No. 5, 2: Corinna's Take" offers not-so-veiled descriptions of the poet lying next to her in bed, saying she "wanted to run [her] tongue / over his con toured, downy outline," and to "feel hands used to spinning / rhymes, spin my brain." The aesthetics con juredby these lines are vivid indeed, but the subtler themes to which these poems aspire are muddled in the gratuitousness. And Cotter's fauvist broad strokes here serve to smear the mature and frankly more interesting observations he offers. Like Cotter's speaker in...