A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

In general, these poems reach beyond the realm of the personal, the tidal wave becoming
a powerful, faceted leitmotif.
The final part, “Painter,” deals with the two deaths she had to face in a single
year: that of her father, more than eighty, and that of her son, only twenty-seven. The
“Painter” section bears the heavy burden of facing the fundamental powerlessness and
loneliness of being human, especially trying when both genealogical lines, descent and
progeny, are cut at the same time. These poems are Kono’s most fragile yet most
impressive attempt at ‘making sense,’ in order not to be overcome by grief. Kono’s
poems are an impressive example of how the creation of art is essentially a distancing
action, allowing for beauty and meaning even in the face of tragedy and futility.
Considering all the cares, losses and traumata that are contained in Kono’s poems, the
collection explains how turning experience into art is a human necessity. The Tsunami
Years are aptly named, tidal waves recurrently washing over a life and a family – and, in
extension, over the islands – resulting in loss after loss, wariness and fear, and a pressing
need to salvage bits and pieces, to reestablish order and beauty, if only on paper.
Eric Chock’s treatment of the personal and the familial appears well-balanced in
its distance to the actual self. His 1990 collection Last Days Here is divided into four
parts which group the poems thematically: “In a Lullaby” deals with childhood and the
lessons one learns, the passing down of rules, of hierarchies, as when the poet addresses
his father: “you stood over me / like the white man you hate / in your dreams.” 359 One
simple sentence encodes the nature of the colonial grip, symptomatic of a perception that
does not deny the interpenetration of personal and political. The second part, “The
Meaning of Fishing,” captures the next ‘phase’ of life (and of awareness), adolescence,
coming of age, growing up. Fishing, the central occupation and metaphor in this section,
is more than the actual act of casting one’s line, as one of Chock’s most famous pieces,
“Poem for My Father,” shows:
I lie dreaming
when my father comes to me and says,
I hope you write a book someday.
He thinks I waste my time, […]
I wish for the lure that catches all fish
359 “Pulling Weeds,” in Eric Chock, Last Days Here, Honolulu 1990: 19.
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