Objects Heavy in This Life

With language that is just as arresting as it is precise, Clare Chu's Objects Heavy in This Life is a dazzling collection. Diverse in its implementation of various formal choices, Chu's work, although often moored in life's darkness, always finds slivers of light for the eye and mind. The mother of an Asian American child, the speaker of Chu's poems doesn't shy away from indicting the racist vitriol of our moment. She writes, "Let us speak the exact noisy truth / until our good trouble is finished," and that's exactly what this text does: makes good trouble, just as the great John Lewis instructed us.

-Douglas Manuel, author of Testify (winner of the 2017 IBPA Benjamin

Franklin Award for poetry;) 2020 recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award



Wry wit, a darkly droll sensibility, informs this collection of poems and prose poems, including one villanelle! Confronting struggles and silences within her childhood family and adult marriage, as well as sweeping social disruption and political conflict in this era of Covid-19, climate change, and racial violence, the speaker of these poems asks herself the fundamental questions of existence and challenges the "lies women believe." Though she may be "divorced because of poetry," she also affirms the worth of human connection, understanding that the "objects heavy in this life" also teach us how to carry them, and thus she shows us how, with courage, "to reclaim the fire" of her life.

-Carolyne Wright, author of Masquerade and This Dream the World:

New & Selected Poems