Poetry by East’s Past

On the weekends while procrastinating homework, you can always find me flipping through the pages of a juicy romance, historical mix-up, or even a classic novel. But poetry is another thing entirely. The closest I’ve come to owning a poetry book is Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends.

But when I read East alumnus Guanghao Yu’s self-published poetry book The Sandcastle, I couldn’t put it down. Rather than rewatching “Gilmore Girls” on Sunday morning, I was rereading elaborate poems about trying to hold on to something that is inevitably slipping away.

The 84-page book is tied together by the cover art by East alumna Yashi Wang, and pairs to be a beautiful companion to the words within.

The poems, filled with captivating details about sleep and silence and the occasional Kansas City reference like ones to the River Market, entertained me in a way that no intriguing romance novel could.

The book made me read, reread and reflect, all while remembering that these professional sounding poems were written by a now-sophomore at Williams College. Some of the poems were even originally featured the East’s literary magazine, The Freelancer, when Yu attended.

My favorite poems, the multi-part “For Her” poems, reminded me of the typical high school romance that inevitably ends — which definitely related to me more than a Shakespearean sonnet.

After being forced to read poetry like “O Captain! My Captain!” in English class, I had decided that I despised poetry, never wanting to hear the words meter and sonnet again after the sophomore year poetry unit. But Yu’s poems about memories and young love held my attention and forced me to keep turning the pages, all for $3.99 on Amazon.

The poems varied in length and style, from half-page rhyming poems to multi-page lyric poems. The narrative setup about holding on to something that slipping from beginning to end kept me awake and attentive even before my first cup of coffee.