Romantic Poets in the Wild is back again with the poetry of Yu-Hung Tien. Yu-Hung Tien is a BIPOC poet and now doing a PhD in English at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Originally from Taiwan, Yu-Hung studied in such cities as Taipei, Berkeley, Shanghai, and Durham. Throughout his professional career, Yu-Hung has tried to underpin the value of approaching Anglo-American literature through a Taiwanese lens. His most
recent work, ‘“The Earth reversed her Hemispheres”: A Transhemispherical Reading of Dickinson’, appears in The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) Bulletin’s ‘Voices Outside the US’ Column.
Yu-Hung used to serve as a PGR Rep for BARS (2022-2024) and a Communications Fellow for K-SAA (2022-2024). He is now part of the EDIS’s 2025 International Conference postgraduate planning committee, bringing the conference back to his home city, Taipei. (https://2025edisinwenshan.wordpress.com/).
Yu-Hung has provided us with a background statement concerning his creative writing practice:
The more I study Romantic poetry, the more I am inspired to drop down my thoughts, encapsulating them into my verses.
The infinite possibility seeded in Romantic poetry has started to haunt me since I did my undergraduate in Taiwan. This is why I decided to study for a Master’s degree in Romantic poetry at Durham University, UK, and to carry on this passion to my PhD journey. In my current project, which explores the 19th-century Anglo-American poetic transmission, Emily Dickinson plays a significant role. I am particularly drawn to the dialogic quality enmeshed in her poetry. I thus try to incorporate my personal and critical responses to and interpretations of her works into my verses and to experiment with how, for someone like me with distinctive racial, gender, cultural and linguistic backgrounds from Dickinson, can invoke creative poetic conversation with her.
This is the brief background in which my poem series, “My Letters to Emily Dickinson,” was composed. Letter I reflects my encounter with her, showing how I foster an inextricable intellectual bond with her poetics. Letter II embodies the struggle that I have experienced as a BIPOC poet and the solace that I found in Dickinson. Echoing what Dickinson claims “This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me –,” I hope that through my letters to my poetic mentor, some self-reflective notes and urgent messages crystalizing the under- represented voices can be sent out to the world.
My Letters to Emily Dickinson
Yu-Hung Tien
I
"There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away"
“The Robin’s my Criterion for Tune – / Because I grow – where Robins do –”
“Because I see – New Englandly – / The Queen, discerns like me –”
—Emily Dickinson
Outside of my window
A volcano about to glow
I reckoned it was yours, Distinct
And mine remained, Extinct –
I decided to book a flight
To make this binding tight
Eager to see my Destiny
Is this Modernity?
I landed in your lands
For me are “Lands away”
Nowhere for me to firmly stay
Visions into Sands –
“New Englandly”, you siren
But I found no robin’s sound
It was the river that I found
I heard your melodies round!
“The Robin’s” your “Criterion for tune”
“Discerning” as you were
I claimed this river that of mine
To feel the way, you are
My volcano began to glow!
This time I learned to flow
In the river where we merged
My destiny emerged –
II
“Split the Lark – and you’ll find the Music –”
“Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?”
—Emily Dickinson
I found a mansion with no flaw
And then I found a crack
Or just a crack within my soul
I felt I was stuck
The only Darkness it was Me
That Tainted the Outer Bright
I decided to mask myself
Like that pretentious Knight
The only way – I thought –
Could make myself alive.
Someone’s knocking, I respond
Who claims “Diversity”
No one greets me in the end
This Hall of Vanity –
There is another call, I hear –
Ask me to “Split the Lark”
This is the only way, she says
To “find the Music” out
No lark appears in my Sight
But just the endless dark
I thus intend to pause my Sigh
To let my spirit park
The colors start to bloom
Inward diversity
Permeate that mansion
And make it no longer bright
I wake up from a dream
A dream of fantasy
Fantasizing my old days’ dream
Dream of my destiny
“Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?”
I finally see this line
My lark is always here, I’m sure
Its abode is also mine!
No crack in this mansion
No crack within my soul
It was the hole that cracked my soul
To let my own Lark grow!
I hope that you enjoyed this week's poetry--uplifting us as we get into the darker days of the year ... Tune in next time when we will be featuring the poet Linda Collins!