Hong earned her master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Texas's Michener Center for Writers. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals. In the following essay, Hong discusses Malroux's use of metaphor and personification to support the theme of porous boundaries in "Morning Walk."
Like many poems in Edge, "Morning Walk" explores the boundaries between different realms: night and day, the natural and the human, life and death, and the actual and the spiritual. For Malroux, these boundaries are highly permeable, and movement between apparently distinct worlds occurs frequently in the poem. In virtually every image, Malroux blends elements from disparate realms, shifting from one aspect to another.
The poem opens with a typically slippery image: "The white ocean in which birds swim / Between the chimneys." In this.....
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