"The extraterrestrial and subterranean are stand-ins for our own unreachable interiors." (An Interview With Kirsten Shu-ying Chen)
Grief holds us close, rends us open, serves at once as scalpel and gift. As another year ends and we take stock of what we’ve left behind, the Half Mystic team finds ourselves reaching out for a place to hold a pain so radiant and warm it’s easy to mistake for light. We’ve yet to find a resting point for that hurt quite like Issue IX contributor Kirsten Shu-ying Chen’s poetry collection light waves, out now from Terrapin Books—a frank and generous look into the mouth of loss, and a path to surviving it.
H/M: light waves is a gorgeous collection that spans the boundaries of resilience and hope, tragedy and joy, quiet and noise. What properties of light inspired this collection?
KSC: That’s very kind, thank you. The original title for the manuscript was light changes in space, derived from the idea of “redshift” and “blueshift”—two physics terms that, respectively, describe how light changes in space when objects move farther away or come nearer to us. It’s the Doppler effect, and it helps astronomers measure how the universe is expanding. But it also feels a lot like how grief works—expansion and contraction, temporality and perspective. And just the general idea that the universe, and everybody in it, is made up of shifting and connective frequencies. There’s an unseen story in those frequencies, too—how women, regardless of relational dynamic, are connected through a sisterhood of suffering.
The poems in this collection are structured into five segments, each named after a different type of light. What narratives do these individual sections tell? How do they intertwine to depict a larger whole?
first light speaks to my mom, and set light is a palette of my daily experience. I think black light exposes some of the deeper recesses of memory. And I call bounce light my “happy poem section,” even though it’s not necessarily happy—but it does focus on love and friendship. ultraviolet is a mixed bag, but it’s strung together by the theme of possibility in chaos and death. All poetry is ultimately about death. Which isn’t morbid or depressing, just true. So light waves is death from different angles, or maybe one large undulating wave of grief where each section forms a different part of that wave.
Much of your work considers the shockwaves of grief. In writing a book about loss, what did you gain?
I don’t know if I gained anything. I just didn’t want to lose any more. Gratefully, writing happens to be a method of preservation I have access to. It’s allowed me to guard my grief.
Outer space and the ocean are prominent images in light waves. What else can poetry explore where humans cannot?
I remember seeing two nearly identical images once, and the associated text was, “Here’s your brain with all its neurons lit up, and here’s the universe.” And I loved that because—of course we’re all one. I believe that. I have faith. Which is something we’ve been robbed of, as a society. But what I am saying is I think poetry can help you see yourself in the world around you. The extraterrestrial and subterranean are stand-ins for our own unreachable interiors. The same way attics and basements stir up dreams or irrationality. It’s all an exploration of the soul, and we don’t have a map for the soul, but we are able to see and feel and name much of what surrounds us, and poetry helps us use that knowledge to explore and name what’s within us.
Half Mystic Journal published your poem “Angles,” which appears in this collection, in Issue IX: Synaesthesia. In your body of work and in the world as you experience it, at what moments do light and sound become interchangeable?
When they are in great contrast with one another. I hear best in the dark and see clearest in silence. That poem was born in my old studio very late one night, just feeling tortured by the noise of a dumb, broken radiator. Nighttime allows you, or forces you, to dial into sound differently.
Throughout light waves, the passage of time is malleable, as if warping around the gravity of certain major events. How have you explored the nonlinearity of time through the inherently linear medium of language?
I think language is a linear medium only in how it generally requires that words be put in a certain order and read in a specific direction. But poetry is also anti-linear in that it discards plot and context and rules, which effectively alters the medium altogether. I’ve heard that a person’s memory is tied to when they first start speaking. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but I do believe language is a critical trigger for consciousness, and that consciousness is where we gain some level of influence over time and how we traverse it. So if we reimagine language as writers, and evolve our relationship to it as readers—two things poetry is perfect for—doesn’t that inevitably change our consciousness and therefore our experience of time? I think so. I think it’s connected.
One of the poems in this collection, “Lessons on Apophenia,” explores the very beautiful, and profoundly human, tendency to recognize meaningful connections between unrelated things. When do you need to overcome this inclination, and when do you need to indulge it?
Oh God, there are days when I see synchronicity everywhere. Usually those are good days, when I feel grounded and in tune. But when it starts to feel too directive or negative, then it’s probably just time for a nap. Less time in my head, more time in my body—I’m always failing toward that advice.
When a particle, such as a photon of light, is measured, its waveform collapses from all possibilities into one location. What do your poems look and feel like before you “measure” them by writing them down?
Wow, particles are lovely. I think my poems feel just like that before they’re written: an expansion and collapse occurring out of sight. They also feel like an urgent visit from an old friend, or finally sitting comfortably in ambivalence long enough to appreciate a moment of clarity without needing certainty to accompany it—like you know something good is coming, but you have to give up control before it gets here. They feel like all those things, but they probably look like me just staring into the abyss and trying to coax something out of it. Which usually results in a first draft that is not too dissimilar in appearance from the conspiratorial Pepe Silvia mindmap in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The epigraph of the collection is from Carl Sagan: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” The sciences are sometimes mistaken as antithetical to the arts, but this collection lingers in both worlds. How does science color your understanding of art, and vice versa?
I love science! I’m not sure I understand any of it in a useful way, but it seems like scientists are after a lot of the same things that artists are—what is happening, why are we here? And the answer, for both, begins with observation. In some ways the two fields do seem antithetical, like distinct endpoints farthest from one other on the same line. But if you bend that line into a horseshoe, then you see the relationship more accurately: science and art are actually closest to one another in many ways, and connecting the two simply requires a leap of faith. Scientists are always trying to make sense of things, whereas artists—out of their senses—are usually trying to make something. It’s a beautiful, inverse relationship, and I’m very grateful for the inspiration I get from the scientific world—not to mention all the vaccines and practical staying-alive stuff. Big fan.
What universes are you baking right now? Where are the waves carrying you next?
Well, this is a hard left in the conversation, but I’m actually writing a gangster origin screenplay loosely based on my real grandmother! It’s an immigrant story and a woman’s story and a story about a brutal fall from grace. It’s been both fun and daunting, which is a territory I apparently enjoy—in my art and otherwise.
Kirsten Shu-ying Chen is the author of light waves, out now with Terrapin Books. She's been shortlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize and PANK Book Contest, and listed as a finalist for the Autumn House Press Chapbook contest and Tomaz Salamun Chapbook Prize. Her work can be found in Bodega, Hanging Loose Press, Half Mystic Journal, Yes Poetry and more. She lives in New York. Explore more: Website | Facebook | Instagram