The human emotional experience comes from the accumulation of countless fleeting
moments. Yang Chih Chieh found himself captivated not by the powerful mechanical
arm of an excavator, capable of moving tons of earth, but by the delicate floral pattern
beneath the glass dome on the control lever. To Him, that was his sky—a vaulted dome
sheltering an eternal flower. As earth was shifted and rearranged in heavy, chaotic
bursts of sound, that flower remained unchanged, moving forward and backward with
the machine.
Modern poetry by necessity uses the language of its time to express contemporary
emotions. In Come As You Are, Yang employs brief and rapid linguistic patterns that
strip language back to its basic function—the conveyance of meaning, clearly and
directly as in a record or journal entry. From this foundation, he uncovers poetry
rooted deeply in everyday life.