Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Two or three years ago I had a brief but heavy fascination with a poet named Wong May after finding a book of hers, A Bad Girl's Book of Animals, at the bottom of a pile in a dusty Ohio bookstore. I wrote a Recovery Project on this brilliant book in the 3rd issue of Octopus (one of my favorite all-time issues I think) that concluded with a bit of a biographical (or anti-biographical note) that read: "She is almost completely undocumented, unphotographed, and unreviewed. She got a BA at the University of Singapore, got her MFA at the University of Iowa in 1968, and wrote three books of poems (Reports [1974] and Superstitions [1978]). In 1978, she curled up into a tiny ball and disappeared." For a while, I was bent on discovering more about May, but she seemed pretty reclusive. She is completely absent, as far as I am aware, from any sort of conversation about contemporary poetry, but has produced three killer books. Anyway, just this week I got an email from a friend of hers who promises to straighten things out. This I know, so far: she is alive and lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband. She has two adult sons. She is apparently still writing, but has not published any of it since 1978. A door has re-opened. I'll keep you abreast.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, this is the person who wrote about wong may in the ezine prospect. could you credit your biographical information about her to me? it sounds like you read it and used a lot of my phrasing. Otherwise, great review in octopus of her. have you read her other books?

Zachary Schomburg said...

I'm not sure who you are, so you'll have to email me to let me know. I'm not sure what the ezine prospect is, and I'm not sure where I used your phrasings (in my recovery project for Octopus or in the blog?). The recovery project was written about 3 years ago.

Let me know.

Anonymous said...

Dear Zachary,
I teach Asian American lit and have also long wondered what happened to Wong May. Please let me know what you learn about her whereabouts (Dublin--wow).

Sincerely,

Dorothy Wang
(dwang@williams.edu)