The 8th House
By day, Feng Sun Chen works at a nursing home in Minneapolis, by night she creates biting poetry like that found in her much-talked about first book, Butcher’s Tree. In her second collection, The 8th House, Chen peels away the exterior of life’s pink underbelly page by page, smelling the meaning in a mother’s stew, carving light from holy grit, dissecting the surging waves of longing and love. These voices occupy the astrological 8th House, a house known for its healers and perversions, ruled by Pluto, where sex, death, and rebirth intersect and consume one another. Continuing to slice away at the distinctions between self and other, animal and human, male and female, the speaker of these poems “exposes by being exposed.”
By day, Feng Sun Chen works at a nursing home in Minneapolis, by night she creates biting poetry such as her latest collection, The 8th House (Black Ocean 2015). She is also the author of the book of poetry Butcher’s Tree (Black Ocean 2011) and the chapbooks Ugly Fish (Radioactive Moat 2011), Arcane Carnal Knowledge (Mortal Steaks 2012), and blud (Spork Press 2011). She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota and sometimes writes about potatoes and art for Montevidayo.
