The title of Stephanie Choi’s debut, The Lengest Neoi (University of Iowa Press, 2024), a mix of English and Cantonese, translates to “the prettiest girl” and underscores the in-between space the speaker straddles throughout the collection––not feeling enough for either side of Chinese-American identity and seeking some sort of individual stasis in the middle.
Reckoning with language and translation comes up repeatedly, often centering on what is lost between two languages. “A Voicemail from Grandma: When I Did Not Return,” as well as a few sound translation poems, seeks to construct meaning out of sound when understanding or comprehension are elusive. An old mentor of mine once said that translation is itself the act of creating something new. Choi seems to believe that through this act, by giving oneself to sound and beauty, connection can be made.
Other poems like “Trace Asymmetries,” “Lipogram,” and the ambitious sonnet crown “American | Ghost | Chestnut” include empty blanks that invite readers into gaps of understanding and language. A clever crossword puzzle in the middle of the sequence pushes the boundaries of this idea.
Choi’s poems most often center on narrative and memory. Poems in prose blocks or numbered sections stand out, with more traditional lyrics filling in the gaps between reflections on travel, adolescence, and family. Others vary in form and concern, however, appearing in winding stanzas and slash-filled blocks or email replies to an over-worried mother. Even as the poems push into more lyrical spaces, there’s a strong force that moves them forward through time and down the page toward distilled endings like:
in the beginning / leng neoi / comes out / of the womb / already a wound
Elsewhere she builds on the image of hair as a stand-in for the changing self:
it’s not
precision i
am trying for
but
immediate
change, a face
that might
surprise me
Many poems reflect how the self is connected to the world, to family, to culture––and disconnected, often by judgment, grief, and racism. Experiences with speech therapy and chronic pain mingle with the lasting impacts of the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese occupation of China, alongside microaggressions and the common language barriers of multigenerational immigrant families. The collection assembles a self-portrait through a collage of personal stories and attempts to situate the self in complicated cultural histories.
Choi builds a tension between the internal and external world of the speaker that keeps the poems shifting throughout the collection. Whether writing after Chinese masters or beloved contemporary poets, reflecting on travels ranging from Jaipur to Seattle, or viewing a painting by an unidentified Chinese artist, there’s a desire to “make up any history / through looking.” “Two-Winged Sunset in Penang” starts with the declaration “I am the remnants of this: / shades of fuchsia adventures turned dim.” and ends with an anecdote about losing earrings on a dancefloor “where a part of myself has been shred.”
The speaker’s name is also a point of reoccurring inquiry, with “A Last Name that Fell from the Sky” chronicling origins through immigration: “Maybe there’s no elaborate story––simply how the immigration officer heard the name off my grandfather’s tongue. He’s been dead five years now and I can’t recall ever hearing him say our last name.”
“To Error in Translation” deals with the nickname leng neoi and the ghazal “My Name” explores early experiences related to names. In “To Write One’s Name,” Choi views Chinese characters from a pictorial lens to transform them into new images beyond discreet communication, like:
my back, a curved spine
through square windows
Later, the speaker sees disconnection in the character’s strokes:
a face above
crooked body
peering out
to garden of gourds
Choi has a keen eye for contrasting objective narration in her poems with succinct images that stick like thorns and illuminate connections across the collection as in “Spine / Vine”:
remains, my grandmother
hunchbacked tending bitter gourd
in her backyard, her body
within mine, a vine
I’d lose too
if I wished the pain away
Poetry can lose its shape when met with strong prose sensibilities, but Choi’s poems pull the reader in with their tight yet never rushed narratives and associative movement, with lyrical flourishes that can bring new color to the backdrops of the speaker’s memories. “When I Watched In the Mood for Love at a Bar in Ipoh, Malaysia” seamlessly moves through time and space and the speaker, blurring the lines of how meaning is made. “What’s real and what’s pretend? I can’t tell without translation”, she writes, as the poem shifts from sections describing the film, to recollections of a man she hopes to meet again, then the present moment alongside another woman at the bar.
The collection’s themes naturally come to a head with the heroic crown of sonnets in the third section, marrying the personal with larger American and Chinese history, and natural destruction––plus some of the poet’s most compelling work with language and prosody.
“American | Ghost | Chestnut” begins as an investigation into the American Chestnut blight of the early 20th century and the experiences of early Asian-American immigrants, before melding with the speaker’s connections to both sides of history. The sonnets unearth grief in larger reminders of “how distant i’ve grown from my own roots,” and what may vanish against our wishes:
. . . my grandmother’s
soup will be lost when she goes no one
learned how to make the zong either
and a way of life will be lost i know
Though Choi takes an informal approach, the containment of the sonnet and linking motion of the crown form allow for a more sustained interaction between the disparate ideas the collection grapples with as well as juxtaposition between the public and personal that illuminate deeper scars. This is captured evocatively in the ending master sonnet:
leaves branches bark lost let the wind
see that no others get a foothold
still the source of infection is unknown
the great race __________ inspires
diasporic body of people spread
planted in american soil gold
origin of the blight a white man tells me
trees growing in china were resistant
to this day still trying to bring back life
unknown consequences precedent
japanese chinese whatever I am decided
not in any book her own sustainability
how distant the crossbred transgenic
still of the histories that define me
The Lengest Neoi contains numerous small stories, yet strikes a balance in the way it carries threads between sections, becoming more direct and contained in the latter half. We start in childhood and move to adulthood, with poems on hair, tattoos, travel, or images of bitter gourd serving as touchstones. Many later poems focus on the speaker’s mother and grandmother such as “Poem Written in my Grandmother’s Dress” and “Where I Find Her / Where I Leave Her,” which hold melancholy alongside captured tenderness. Others showcase bittersweet distance from the mother. The final sections see the speaker accepting the way her world has changed with age and will continue to as she forges her own path, however uncertain and winding. She finds that “there’s light in this space between,” wandering a museum in “Lightwell”.
I’m intrigued by this collection and captivated by Choi’s sense of balancing narrative clarity with negative space, at times crafting poems with moments of devastating revelation and others more concerned with simple witness and record. Both sorts of poems turn a spotlight on the other. Within her work is a wonder that carries you just far enough to connect and reflect alongside her, before dropping you into moments that remind us why we’re following this journey in the first place:
I closed my eyes / against overhead lights / to learn that pain might be / rewarded
I look forward to seeing the directions Stephanie Choi’s future work takes her, whether continuing to explore the intersections of personal and public history or experimenting with narrative and form to further illuminate the world of this collection––or invite us into another.
*
