LITR 5535: American Romanticism
Student Student Poetry Presentation, fall 2000

Reader: Sheshe Giddens

Respondent: Jane Ftacnik

"Heaven"

by

Cathy Song

N 2811-12

Cathy Song’s poem, "Heaven," exemplifies the Romantic spirit by evoking idealism, nostalgia, escapism and separation. In the poem, a woman who is disconnected from her Chinese heritage romanticizes and longs for an ancestral homeland that she has never seen. She amused by her son’s notion that "when we die we’ll go to China," but as the idea takes hold of her imagination she compares her idealized view of China with the familiar surrounding of "the pancake plains just east of the Rockies" where she lives. China serves as an escape from everyday life in the town with "broken fences, the whiny dog, the rattletrap cars" where she is isolated from Chinese culture and devoid of bamboo trees. The only tangible connection the narrator has to China is a map and railroad track near her home that her immigrant great-grandfather helped to build. There is a genetic connection to China expressed by the narrator’s belief that "It must be in the blood, this notion of returning."

Comments:

The narrator has an antagonistic view of nature demonstrated by the language used in the poem. "the air is so thin, you can starve on it. No bamboo trees"

The great-grandfather exemplifies the Romantic spirit because it is he who set out on the adventure to come to America.

SheShe read the poem and then talked about the author's background. I offered the observation that heaven was impossible to reach and may not exist at all. The town was called a "Hell-hole" and heaven was perfection. Someone contributed that one of the names the Chinese people used for America was "Gold Mountain." We discussed how the Chinese may have had a romantic notion that America would be an adventure. Now the surviving relatives of the grandfather are living in the aftermath, which is not romantic. Someone contributed that the author had an antagonistic relationship with nature and it was a nefarious force. The discussion then focused on how the Chinese and other immigrants desired to return home where they would be accepted. The immigrants may never be able to assimilate to the American culture and be just the same as any American. Therefore, they would always have nostalgia for the old country. Someone mentioned that it is impossible to desire what you already have. The discussion concluded with the idea that we enjoy the convenience of progress, yet we abhor the inevitable effects.