I have read hundreds of verses and novels, both published and unpublished, written by Chath pierSath. His writing is as prolific as his visual art, exploring the depths of human suffering, memories, and the personal and cultural melodramas that haunt and torment us. Each of his published books is bold, courageous, and unflinching in his examination of culture and himself. Simultaneously, his work soothes the reader’s soul and illuminates the universal darkness in our lives.

While his books are birthed from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge and its aftermath in Cambodia, his life in America, his search for love and belonging, and the loss of his mother – it is his unwavering honesty that reverberates after each poem.

A simple Google search of Chad pierSath will provide the reader with skillful reviews of his work, background, and accomplishments. I chose to refrain from reiterating them. Instead, I will be as honest as Chath is about how his poems affect me.

Chath told me why he included the selections you are about to read:

“The idea is that they’re just echoes without a body, shape, or form. They are a flow of thoughts in the wind. They come to me, and then they’re gone. But I took the time to write them down, so they remain re-echoed, maybe in some other forms, shapes to be picked at, digested, or interpreted as something else. It’s a process —- to spit out, regurgitate, repeat, let go, embrace a moment, a thought, a memory, maybe at random. You arrive at this greater end and understand that a sweater or pair of socks may appear from each thread. “

I studied these poems while experiencing a dangerous challenge in my life—the kind that holds you by your throat and leaves you shivering with its consequences and destruction. Reading these poems out loud in the quiet of long nights left me with the understanding that our readiness to console others extends to only what we can do to console ourselves.
As a reader, Chath was consoling me – but only because he constantly consoles himself.

Chath’s poetry affirms his refusal to be defined by the will of others. He can stand by his observations and emotions without apologizing. They belong to him.
He knows there is no hierarchy in suffering and writes with tender observations about those in his life. He illustrates to his readers the perplexing truth that we become more than one in many of our most profound relationships. A child becomes an adult, a guardian to parents, even after the death of a beloved. To play several roles in a lifetime is inevitable despite their consequences. Chath’s willingness to explore these roles pricks and jabs his readers to reflect on their own.

These poems explore what the world and others do to us while embracing the hard truth that they do not define us as much as what we have done to ourselves. Chath does not take his pain and puts it on a mantel to polish like an ornamental clock. He unravels it, sends it to the wind, and revisits it when it returns on a leaf, a landscape, the ache of a farmer’s muscles, or a dream during a cold winter night. Readers will find no traces of sentimentality in his poems. Instead, they will be washed by lingering sorrows for all humans do to tarnish each other and the good Earth. These poems are gifts of eloquent despair.

The exploration of both memory and the present are hallmarks of these poems. Chath pierSath carries his dramatic past without romanticizing it or creating fictional memories. Instead, he throws us darts of images to conjure what seldom can be described. When he writes about more present experiences, he recognizes that they do not surrender as easily to interpretation, leaving his readers with questions with his use of both tragedy and comedy. In a world too crowded with those who want center-stage, Chath’s poems are refreshing despite their subject matter. His truth is simple: the Earth belongs to adults, and we have made it untrustworthy.

His power is creating a narrative using a collection of moments defined by time and space and scattered to the winds. Wherever they land, they become a piece of art, like a sculpture or a painting. Sometimes, his works feel haunted, as if the past is homeless. His poems offer the past a home so that it may live in the present.

We are lucky if we stumble upon them.