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[Dusk Aflame: poems & art] [One Thousand Minds Brimming] [ Tango, Tangoing: Poetry & Art ][Tango Tangueando: poemas & dibujos] [Song of the Cicadas] [ Why is the Edge Always Windy? ][ Vietnamese Translations ] [ Japanese Translations ][Publications]

Mong-Lan's seventh collection, Dusk Aflame: poems & art, is a bittersweet melange, a delirium of experiences and memories. Buenos Aires looms large with elegiac, nocturnal footsteps:  on the edge of chaos and accidents waiting to happen. Where European majesty once molded lives its dying whimper, is resurrected in Latin American brusqueness in a histrionic city towards the end of the world.  Buenos Aires, womb and capital of the tango, a melancholic music and sultry dance created by men and women who felt a need for the embrace. Death aspires to be a character here, and Dusk, too, female, animistic. An elegy for all that exists only in memory.  On a lighter note, Mong-Lan continues with her cherished theme--love poems to nourishing delectables, like persimmon, rice, and sesame seed.  Dusk Aflame includes odes to the body, to the South, New Orleans, Houston, Galveston, and an island off the coast of Thailand. Jazz in poetry, in rhythm to the syncopations of life, to the tango, all comes together in a voice and world vision that is uniquely Mong-Lan's.

Mong-Lan's lyrical brush and ink paintings accompany her poems in a poetic dance of movement, providing a visual resonance and portent to her work. Her vital virtuoso strokes assume their own characters and lives of their own.

". . . A true original, unafraid of sentiment and at the height of her artistic prowess, Mong-Lan’s new book proves she remains one of our leading poets.”—Ravi Shankar, poet, professor, editor of Drunken Boat.

“Mong-Lan’s poems are fresh and real as a street, full of the seriousness of pleasure. She has the same sense of joy that Kenneth Koch loved in the courage to sing, happiness of St.-John Perse. . . . I praise these poems of praise which collapse distance and makes us feel, as O’Hara seemed to say, poetry is just a telephone call away.”—David Shapiro, poet, critic, professor, NY