eileen chengyin chow
LightNews LightNews
banner
chowleen.bsky.social
eileen chengyin chow
@chowleen.bsky.social
8.4K followers 710 following 12K posts
@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
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
chowleen.bsky.social
eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · Jun 22
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

-Wisława Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning” (t. Cavanagh & Barańczak)
#everynightapoem #war
The End and the beginning After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by. Someone has to trudge through sludge and ashes, through the sofa springs, the shards of glass, the bloody rags. Someone has to lug the post to prop the wall, someone has to glaze the window, set the door in its frame. No sound bites, no photo opportunities, and it takes years. All the cameras have gone to other wars. The bridges need to be rebuilt, the railroad stations, too. Shirtsleeves will be rolled to shreds. 286 Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was. Someone else listens, nodding his unshattered head. But others are bound to be bustling nearby who'll find all that a little boring. From time to time someone still must dig up a rusted argument from underneath a bush and haul it off to the dump. Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing. Someone has to lie there in the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds.
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chowleen.bsky.social
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

-Wisława Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning” (t. Cavanagh & Barańczak)
#everynightapoem #war
The End and the beginning After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by. Someone has to trudge through sludge and ashes, through the sofa springs, the shards of glass, the bloody rags. Someone has to lug the post to prop the wall, someone has to glaze the window, set the door in its frame. No sound bites, no photo opportunities, and it takes years. All the cameras have gone to other wars. The bridges need to be rebuilt, the railroad stations, too. Shirtsleeves will be rolled to shreds. 286 Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was. Someone else listens, nodding his unshattered head. But others are bound to be bustling nearby who'll find all that a little boring. From time to time someone still must dig up a rusted argument from underneath a bush and haul it off to the dump. Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing. Someone has to lie there in the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds.
June 22, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
gregpak.net
Anti-war march in NYC, organized overnight. Happening right now, 8th Ave.

People care.
January 3, 2026 at 8:28 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
This year is already catastrophic so you might as well join me in my plan to practice Baduanjin (#八段錦 “Eight sections of brocade”) every morning

Note: I do not do so quite as energetically as the Shaolin monks I saw perform last summer
January 3, 2026 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chowleen.bsky.social
John Berger, most beloved, passed away on January 2, 2017.

"What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried...With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”

#everynightapoem #ofsorts
What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.
January 2, 2025 at 10:59 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
Ah yes. And the future is 2026.
film still from Metropolis, depicting interconnected skyscrapers
January 1, 2026 at 10:49 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…”

Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907
(Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton)
#everynightapoem #january
“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.“ Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907 (Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton)
January 1, 2026 at 6:37 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
January 1st park run - happy new year
January 1, 2026 at 2:39 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
peterkhill.bsky.social
Thank you

“Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.”
January 1, 2026 at 2:45 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chowleen.bsky.social
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 5:57 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
So much of any year is flammable

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Burning the Old Year"
#everynightapoem
January 1, 2026 at 3:47 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

As ever - sharing Tennyson’s exhortation to leave the old year dying in the night.

In gratitude, fellow travelers. #everynightapoem
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.
January 1, 2026 at 2:32 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
oxervator.bsky.social
Squali in festa
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 31, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
hofrench.bsky.social
Reading. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/n...
‘This Is Our Time’: Acclaimed Poet to Honor Mamdani With Inaugural Poem
www.nytimes.com
December 30, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chowleen.bsky.social
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

-FS Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, published 4/10/1925.
Original 1925 jacket cover of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate a marvellous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period which reveals a hero like no other one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. .. It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again?" It is the story of this Jay Gatsby who came so mysteriously to West Egg, of his sumptuous er-tertainments, and of his love for Daisy Buchanan a story that ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism, and is infused with a sense of the strangeness of human circumstance in a heedless universe. It is a magical, living book, blended of irony, romance, and mysticism. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS The GREAT GATSBY FITZGERALD
April 10, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
libraryephemera.bsky.social
This thread is 100% worth your time and attention.
solomonmissouri.bsky.social Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 4d
right after my father died several of his contemporaries invited me to come speak at their churches ... they knew i was in college and wanted to help me out
December 30, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chowleen.bsky.social
You must react everyday to what is happening. But that is no way to write a book or a sentence.

-James Baldwin, intv w Joe Walker, 1972
December 7, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
what I do, personally, is something like letting all those things in, and then when it is time to write a book or a sentence they are still around, but quieter, not demanding reaction but to be speaking to the reality at hand
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 28d
You must react everyday to what is happening. But that is no way to write a book or a sentence.

-James Baldwin, intv w Joe Walker, 1972
December 29, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
thebulwark.com
"This from their good friend, Maria Shriver—this I believe: 'They loved their kids so much, and they never stopped trying to be really good parents.' Really, that’s the most and the best anyone can ever do."
How Rob Reiner Made Children His Issue
Pushing for greater investments in early childhood development, he improved the lives of countless kids.
lnk.thebulwark.com
December 29, 2025 at 3:00 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Introduced the kids last night to #ThisIsSpinalTap, which I knew they would love because well, it’s an eleven.

And bc a longtime family favorite is Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous — pretty much a sentimental cover version of Spinal Tap.

What I am trying to reconstruct is how I understood it 1/2
Movie poster: A FINE LINE BETWEEN STUPID AND CLEVER THE STORY OF SPINAL TAP BY ROB REINER WITH CHRISTOPHER GUEST, MICHAEL MeKEAN, AND HARRY SHEARER
December 29, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
chellekat.bsky.social
my partner uses the particularly happy one as his discord pfp and we call him (the happy shark, not my partner) Shork
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 29, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
alixiswright.bsky.social
Heated Rivalry (2025)
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
notrimskiy.bsky.social
Can we bring back "sociable mayor husband and aloof artist wife" discourse for like a minute.
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
calmerfuture.bsky.social
Edorky 😻
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Reposted by eileen chengyin chow
acidlich.bsky.social
This could be us but you won’t do the reading!!!!
chowleen.bsky.social eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 6d
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 7:24 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
A pair of happy hammerhead sharks
(ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)
Paintings of hammerhead sharks depicted in the "Oki National Products Illustration Notes". From Japan, Edo Period, ca 1735
December 28, 2025 at 5:57 PM