eileen chengyin chow

@chowleen

@chowleen most elsewhere; my old tweets reappear here at odd times. Duke prof, APSI Dir+DGS, Duke Story Lab founder. DUP Sinotheory, LAReviewOfBooks board. Shewo Institute 舍我紀念館 Director, Biographical Lit 傳記文學 publisher 周成蔭 #everynightapoem

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Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y chowleen.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 5d

Rereading this beautiful, beautiful book by Edmund de Waal after a summer spent in the archives searching for family in Shanghai and Taipei - and now, back in Avi’s mountains in Maçanet - seems exactly right

Book cover of Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes A Hidden Inheritance
Back drop is the Pyrenees

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 7d

‘Longing,’ says the poet Robert Hass, because desire is full of endless distances.’ — Often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing. -Rebecca Solnit, “The Blue of Distance” #everynightapoem #ofsorts

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 11d

Barcelona days

Down the street view in Eixample, Barcelona

View onto the balcony and street, Barcelona

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 17d

Considering it was a late July summer night in Taipei - it was pretty lovely

Taipei CKS memorial hall outdoors plaza at dusk

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 17d

if on a summer's night - 雲門舞集《關不掉的耳朵》 2026 鄭宗龍編導 wonderful to be in town for #雲門舞集 #cloudgatedance's open air performance alongside 10K Taipei denizens tonight.

2026 雲門戶外公演 on fan - site of cloud gate dance performance

National Symphony Hall in Taipei at dusk. With crowds outside

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 21d

Therefore / call out to him over the open water, over the bright water / with your dark song, with your grasping / unnatural song — passionate, like María Callas. Who / wouldn’t want you? -Louise Glück, “Penelope’s Song” #everynightapoem

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one, do now as I bid you, climb the shelf-like branches of the spruce tree; wait at the top, attentive, like
a sentry or look-out. He will be home soon; it behooves you to be generous. You have not been completely perfect either; with your troublesome body you have done things you shouldn't discuss in poems. Therefore
call out to him over the open water, over the bright water with your dark song, with your grasping, unnatural song-passionate, like Maria Callas. Who
wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite could you possibly fail to answer? Soon
he will return from wherever he goes in the meantime, suntanned from his time away, wanting his grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,
you must shake the boughs of the tree to get his attention, but carefully, carefully, lest his beautiful face be marred by too many falling needles.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 23d

Matt Damon reading The Odyssey in 1998 on the set of The Talented Mr Ripley From gregwilliamsphotography on IG. I love his discussion of the compositional lines of his photo.

black and white photograph by Greg Williams. Matt Damon reading The Odyssey in 1998 on the set of The Talented Mr Ripley

"This was taken in August 1998 in Piazza Navona, Rome, and shot on film, hence the grain. It happened because I'd met the late director Anthony Minghella, who lived at the end of my road and was very supportive of me, and someone I cared for very much. I was doing a Sunday Times commission celebrating British cinema - which I turned into my first book, Greg Williams On Set. These shots were part of that project.
But it's probably the closest l've ever got to taking one of the pictures that made me want to photograph Hollywood. It feels like Life magazine in the '50s - it's only the modern boom, lights and the clothing of a woman in the background that tells you that it's not that era. There was a terrific rainstorm that day so they were waiting for it to pass, sheltering under a reflector that the crew turned into a giant umbrella to keep us dry. I'd met Matt's co-star Cate Blanchett (sitting on the chair in the forefront) on Elizabeth, but it was my first time working with Matt. This was a moment when he was moving from costar roles to lead; he was really dialled into the work. A quick Google revealed he was reading a 1954 Penguin edition of Homer's classic, which is very much what Tom Ripley might have chosen to read.
It's a favourite photo of mine partly because it captures a quiet moment on a busy set so well, with the name of the project on the back of the chair - 'it does what it says on the tin. But I also like it because the lines of this photo all lead to Matt: the spokes of the umbrella, the building lines in the background, the turn of Cate's head, even the line of her bra strap. It's a picture I've loved for a long time but it now has added resonance. It's amazing that a photo that is 30 years old now has more relevance than ever. It's a picture that's aged well."
Shot on Kodak Tri-X film on a Leica M6, 1/250 sec, f/5.6, pushed to 800 ISO, 21 mm

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 23d

Nolan’s #TheOdyssey truly was #Oppenheimer II but that was actually part of its contemporaneity and power. Matt Damon was brilliant, perfect —happy to have been proven wrong - I lol’d when I first heard he was cast!

Screen still from Chris Nolan’s The Odyssey - sacking of Troy

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· 28d

My grandparents met in a café in Paris in the 1920s. She was a poetry student at the Sorbonne, and he was a visiting journalist from Beijing who had to reinvent himself as a foreign correspondent when he ran afoul of a warlord. Romance, marriage, children (incl my mother) ensued. Happy Bastille Day!

Black and white studio wedding portrait of my grandparents Cheng Shewo and Hsiao Tsung-jang - they are in western formal clothes

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jul 10

Waiting for Typhoon Bavi 燈火闌珊處靜待颱風

Nightscape Taipei, dimly lit streets and building

Nightscape Taipei, mountains against a pre-typhoon sky

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jul 4

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! -Langston Hughes, from ‘Let America Be America Again’ (1935) #everynightapoem

[Robert Mapplethorpe, 1977]
Black and white photograph of a weather-beaten flag

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 29

Shanghai days

Street scene Shanghai, blurry bike rider and blue framed doorway

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 26

Messi everywhere!

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 21

Suppose I say summer -Raymond Carver, “Hummingbird” (For Tess) From “A New Path to the Waterfall," completed in the last weeks of Carver's life, and published posthumously #everynightapoem #summersolstice

HUMMINGBIRD
For Tess
Suppose I say summer,
write the word hummingbird,"
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 19

端午安康 A sunbathing turtle and some Shanghai greenery to usher in Duanwu

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 12

Duane Michals, “Empty New York” (1964-65)

black and white photograph of back bench of a bus

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 12

Duane Michals, Meryl Streep, 1975 “The picture was taken before she was famous...We went up town and ran around the Marquis theatre and had a lot of fun. I asked her to dance and she was as joyful as she seems in the photograph, just radiant.”

photo portrait of Meryl Streep, medium close-up, black and white, her hands outstretched

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 12

Duane Michals, “Magritte with Hat” (1965). via Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

photo portrait of the artist Rene Magritte with a upside down bowler hat perched on his head, and another larger one superimposed

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 12

One of my favorite photographers, Duane Michals, passed away this week, age 94. I came across a postcard print of "This Photograph is My Proof" when I was 18 and decided that the hand-written insistence - "It did happen, she did love me!” was both the height and depth of all love. Safe travels -

THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS MY PROOF
This photograph is my proof There was that afternoon
when things were still good between us, and she embraced
me, and we were so happy. It did happen. She did
love me. Look see for yourself!

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 11

“To nest is to trust.” Long awaited! The Book of Birds - A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss, by Jackie Morris and @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social. (Nabbed at our wonderful local Regulator Bookshop of course!)

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 10

Reminds me of this: the Taiwanese artist Chen Yi Fei designed a 'tear gun' that collects and freezes actual tears to shoot them back at the person who caused them to cry. Copyright: Design Academy Eindhoven, 2016 Photography: Ronald Smits IG: _fei_studio_

the artist Chen Yi Fei posing with her 'tear gun' - contraption to collect tears from one's tear ducts to shoot back via a connected, customized pistol

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 10

Green sadness is sadness dressed for graduation, it is the sadness of June Mary Ruefle #everynightapoem #ofsorts

Green sadness is sadness dressed for graduation, it is the sadness of June, of shiny toasters as they come out of their boxes, the table laid before a party, the smell of new strawberries and dripping roasts about to be devoured; it is the sadness of the unperceived and therefore never felt and seldom expressed, except on occasion by polka dancers and little girls who, in imitation of their grandmothers, decide who shall have their bunny when they die. Green sadness weighs no more than an unused handkerchief, it is the funereal silence of bones beneath the green carpet of evenly cut grass upon which the bride and groom walk in joy.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 10

My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow Andrew Marvell, from To His Coy Mistress, 1681 #everynightapoem #fragment

Still life of summer bounty of greens and root vegetables from Duke Canpus Farm

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 6

Verde que te quiero verde (Green how I want you green) -Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) Always read Lorca, especially on his birthday #everynightapoem

Federico Garcia Lorca, Romancerto Gitano (book cover)

VERDE que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura ella sueña en su baranda, verde carne, pelo verde, con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana, las cosas le están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.
*
Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 4

"Someone remembered. Someone always remembers." I always think of this grave marker mentioned in the ending of @iandenisjohnson.bsky.social's powerful essay, written on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of 6/4/1989.

tombstone engraved in red ink with the key set of lines which could also be read vertically

Eight calla lilies

Nine yellow chrysanthemums

Six white tulips

Four red roses

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 4

😢

Marjane Satrapi’s instagram grid, announcing her husband Mattias Rios’s death and black boxes spelling out For I have lost the love of my life

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 4

I am sorry to hear that the writer Gao Xingjian 高行健 has passed away - marking the passing of a generation. Sharing a slightly goofy memory of a day spent being Gao's interpreter shortly after he won the Nobel - and navigating an awkward encounter w Saul Bellow: lareviewofbooks.org/blog/chinabl...

Perhaps most challengingly, in my first year as an assistant professor, I interpreted for and moderated a live conversation between Nobel Laureates Saul Bellow and Gao Xingjian for public television. Gao had just won the Nobel and was at Harvard for part of his victory tour, and he wished to meet his literary hero, then emeritus at BU, I believe. Bellow, cantankerous, made no effort at pretending to having read anything by Gao, or of considering him a literary peer. Thrown together for nearly an hour on live camera, Bellow decided that the way through this conversation was to crack lewd jokes about bouncy breasts and such, while Gao’s bewildered response was to make repeated reference to Bellow’s seniority and sagacity. Every respectful mention of Bellow’s age by Gao, however, would provoke Bellow into more off-color comments about virility and the women he had bedded. And then there was me - young, feminist, and pissed off. Awkward, to say the least. I think towards the end of that conversation I was just making stuff up instead of interpreting their words.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 2

Friends: Duke APSI will be welcoming Viet Thanh Nguyen as our inaugural keynote this Nov, and we're reading two of his books this summer for APSI Book Club. All are welcome! Registration details in image alt. July 14 The Sympathizer, w Marguerite Nguyen Aug 17 To Save and To Destroy, w Eileen Chow

APSI Summer Book Club: join us to discuss THE SYMPATHIZER with Professor Marguerite Nguyen - Duke Asian/Pacific Studies Institute
https://asianpacific.duke.edu/event/apsi-summer-book-club-2026-sympathizer-07-14-2026/

APSI Summer Book Club: join us to discuss TO SAVE AND TO DESTROY with Professor Eileen Chow - Duke Asian/Pacific Studies Institute
https://asianpacific.duke.edu/event/apsi-summer-book-club-2026-save-and-destroy-08-17-2026/

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 2

As a scar commemorates what happened, so is memory but itself a scar. -Carl Phillips, 'The Need for Dreaming' (2011) #everynightapoem

THE NEED FOR DREAMING

As a scar commemorates what happened,
so is memory itself but a scar. As in: Given
hunger, which is endless only until it isn't, he
destroyed what he could. And then? -

So the lover enters the beloved - enters,
and withdraws; so a yellow-crested
night heron wades into view, then out:
useless? It gets harder to say. Like
signs of struggle in a field where nothing
stirs, the past can seem everywhere. I think
to be useless doesn't have to mean
not somehow mattering. Years now, and

still I can't stop collecting the strewn shells
of spent ammunition where I come across them;
carefully, I hold each up toward what's left of the light.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen· Jun 1

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. —— Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. -Philip Larkin, The Trees #everynightapoem As always, for the end of May.