The Enoch Pratt Free Library represents the free public library system of Baltimore. To learn more about the annual poetry contest, and to read Anne Rong’s winning Poem, “Chang’e Thinks of Houyi on the Mid-Autumn Moon”, click here.
Anne Rong is a Taiwanese-American poet born and raised in Rockville, Maryland. She is currently an undergraduate student studying English and government at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2022, she was awarded the George A. Watrous Literary Prize for poetry. Her favorite book is Written on the Body by Jeannette Winterson and her go-to sushi order is one spicy tuna roll and one spicy crunchy tuna roll, both doused in soy sauce. Her winning poem will appear in the Summer 2023 issue of LPR.
Our conversation follows.
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LPR: Congratulations on winning the Enoch Pratt Poetry Contest! In reading your poem, “Chang’e Thinks of Houyi on the Mid-Autumn Moon”, I can’t say what I like best: That the pomelo skin is a stand in for Houyi as Chang’e thinks of him; That when Chang’e thinks of Houyi she’s wearing the rind on her head, like a crown and we have these memories, in three concise sentences; or that you end with the sweetness of the waning moon, that it is an autumn moon. Tell me where you began with this poem? What was the inspiration? How did the pomelo get in there, or was it there first?
AR: I’d never written “creatively,” so to speak, until late 2021, when I took Intro to Creative Writing at my previous institution, Hamilton College. The second poem I wrote for class was a series of haikus about Taiwanese culture and American grocery shopping, and I was eager to continue that exploration of Asian identity through food in my third one, which ended up being “Chang’e Thinks of Houyi on the Mid-Autumn Moon”. Plus, my birthday falls right around the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival every year, so being a little homesick at school and taking this course in the fall semester really got the juices flowing.
As the title suggests, my poem meditates on the Chinese myth of Chang’e and Houyi. Houyi is gifted an elixir of immortality that his wife, Chang’e, drinks (whether she selfishly steals it or is forced to drink it, I’ll leave it up to you), casting her to the moon. To make her feel less alone, Houyi leaves Chang’e’s favorite fruits and desserts out every night. I’m sure there’s a deeper cultural connection between the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and the pomelo (homophones to auspicious words, probably). But, as far as I’m concerned, pomelo season always falls on my birthday, and every fall my mom always cuts some up after dinner. I’d wear the peel on my head as a kid because it just smelled so good, and the scent would linger in my hair, leaving this cloud of citrusy goodness swirling around my pillow all night when I went to bed. And a pomelo looks like a moon too, doesn’t it?
But, as far as I’m concerned, pomelo season always falls on my birthday, and every fall my mom always cuts some up after dinner. I’d wear the peel on my head as a kid because it just smelled so good, and the scent would linger in my hair, leaving this cloud of citrusy goodness swirling around my pillow all night when I went to bed. And a pomelo looks like a moon too, doesn’t it?”
LPR: What are you reading right now? What writer’s (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) do you find particularly exciting or inspiring?
AR: I wish I could pretend to read all those cerebral, gritty books that spark an intellectually rigorous conversation, but the truth is that I love reading about love. That deliciously brutal, heart-shattering, “better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” type of love––no happy endings allowed. What else could you expect from someone whose favorite book of all time is Written on the Body by Jeannette Winterson? I also wish I could say I stringently stick to that criteria and that I only read the real highbrow, sophisticated, big-word romances, but that’d be a lie too. When I was studying for my finals a few weeks ago, I banned myself from streaming any films or shows and nearly drove myself to the brink of insanity. Somehow, I got to thinking, I can’t trust myself to watch something and risk slipping into obsession, but reading is sort-of-kind-of an academic activity, so I’ll just read a whole bunch to scratch that itch. What a mistake! The last thing I watched was Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, so I found myself on a rampage, devouring book after book after book from Julia Quinn. That’s not to bash her stuff, of course–Julia Quinn, you’re an icon! But man, I’d have a paper due in 10 hours and still be up until 4 a.m. kicking my feet, reading The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband. Even she’d be a little concerned.
LPR: Are you intent on writing poetry or are you interested in pursuing fiction and or nonfiction?
AR: Honestly, I only started with poetry because that’s how that intro class was organized, so who knows where I might have ended up if the syllabus was flipped. Last semester was certainly one of creative discovery: I wrote a playlet for one class, a little screenplay for another, and I took my second real creative writing class ever––Beginner’s Fiction Workshop! I had to write a dozen papers as well, so there’s that for nonfiction. For the time being, I think I’ll keep down the path of fiction at school just to see where it takes me, but I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m committed to one thing over the other. I’ve also taken a bunch of classes about drama (not so much acting—I’m afraid I’m rather wooden on the stage), and I even talked a professor into letting me join his intermediate playwriting class. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but I feel like the boundaries between all the different forms of writing are a bit blurry, and though each one certainly relies on a slightly different set of core skills, those skills are highly transferable from one form to the other. Maybe that’s what’s so great about emerging as a writer in college: I can dip my toes into all these different crafts from course to course to see what sticks. Right now, I’m still toe-dipping.
LPR: What’s next for you?
AR: Gosh, I don’t know! It’s the second week of summer break, and the opportunities are limitless and yet so, so limited. In my short time writing, I’ve slowly gravitated towards dialogue, and I’ve been meaning to try writing a screenplay, but even thinking about it makes me cringe. Or, like how my second poem led into my third, I’m also thinking about writing a short story tinged with the themes of environmentalism that I explored in the workshop last semester, but it’s hard to write when you’re all alone without a cohort of students writing on the same deadlines as you. I’m a big fan of different poetic forms and I definitely want to dig into a contrapuntal over the summer, but poems really are just a special form of torture to write, aren’t they? Anyways, in the grand scheme of things, what’s next for me is probably grad school. Then Maryland Poet Laureate, probably. Pushcart next. National Poet Laureate, Nobel Prize, an Oscar or two. Snooze.
Little Patuxent Review 