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Longing for the Mother Tongue by Joseph Farley

Longing for the Mother Tongue by Joseph Farley
March Street Press, 2010
ISBN: 1596611480
31 Pages; paperback $9

Reviewed by Yu-Han Chao

One of the most interesting things about Joseph Farley’s new chapbook is the unending shifts of positions that Farley makes between cultures. In this book of 18 unusual poems, an all-American poet and his Chinese wife take turns changing spots, from insider to outsider and from the outside back in.

In “Bargain Hunting in Kowloon,” the poet’s wife warns him away from the massage parlor, where “The girls don’t / use their hands. / They use a machine / similar to / a palm sander.” (19) Here, a terrifying metaphor and image based on the knowledge of an insider scares off the unsuspecting outsider. But a few lines later, it is the wife’s turn to blush, when in a back alley an old woman is selling sex toys, a symbol of western influence in an originally conservative culture.

The poet witnesses people wearing bandages and gauze after the Tiananmen incident in “The Eye of the Beholder.” He points them out to his wife, who now suddenly behaves like an outsider, claiming, “I saw nothing. / I don’t know what / you’re talking about.” (21) As “a native to China” staying in her home country, the poet’s wife should know better than anyone what is happening, but it takes an outsider to point out the obvious, while the insider vigorously denies what she might know.

The same terrifying sense of denial from the locals permeates Farley’s descriptions of what he sees in China, filtered through his westerner’s lens. He describes a young, cross-eyed cousin torturing the chickens with a stick, matches, and burning wood, while the adults of the village talk amongst themselves and watch on: “no one said a word. / no one tried to stop him.” (26) Disturbed, the poet whispers something [unknown] to his wife, who tells him to mind his own business. To the wife, the boy is “just a boy / raised in the country, / used to animals / raised for food.” (26) To the foreign poet from the culture that produced Silence of the Lambs, the boy “had the makings / of a psycho killer.” (26) So many times a tourist or visitor seeks to be respectful of a new culture and tries too hard to be polite, but Farley is honest enough to tell us exactly what he sees, the night soils (from chamberpots) he smells, and how he really feels about the little things natives take for granted or no longer notice.

There are also times when those on the inside and outside come together, in the intercultural couple’s sons or in a love poem, “Chang ‘Er,” where the poet lovingly speaks of his wife as his moon goddess, descended to the mortal plain.

A fascinating chapbook that combines exotic scenery interpreted by a familiar voice, Farley’s Longing for the Mother Tongue will surprise and delight readers from any culture in foreign, unexpected ways.

Yu-Han Chao is Poetry Editor at Rose & Thorn Journal. Her poetry book, We Grow Old, was published by the Backwaters Press. Visit her writing and artwork at her website.