Perennial Counterpart

To be with Perennial Counterpart is to “river around” the intimate folds of its letters, lovers, loved ones, literary souls. How can one make a whole life? Perhaps with beautiful lines that spiral and enmesh themselves in daring relations. Like the strange “fur that grows on a crystal,” Yongyu Chen’s probing language turns mixture into a beguiling poetics of friendship, a reverie for a more elemental and rejuvenated address to our unsettled world.

What a gift it is to climb into each of Yongyu Chen’s rapturous, cinematic, philosophical lines, and find myself in a world that so much and so many insist cannot be. And yet it is. Filaments of care. Innocence, intensity. Memory as a structure. Obsession as a form of offering. Perception itself as a supreme creative act. I am astonished by the lyric conviction animating this poet’s work, and the ongoing dialogue—across time, lives, temperaments and texts—that gently yet adamantly stitches us to one another. A generous, exquisite debut.