Sam Cheuk's Love Figures reviewed in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement

U of T Creative Writing grad Catriona Wright reviews Sam Cheuk's Love Figures in the latest Maple Tree Literary Supplement. Here's a sample:

Reading Sam Cheuk’s debut poetry collection Love Figures is like stepping into a film noir. Each poem is “an interrogation room” (63) with the speaker at once the detective “rummag[ing] through the memorabilia / for clues” (74) and the perpetrator confessing, perhaps falsely, to being the one with his “hand on the cleaver” (16). A chiaroscuro effect, as likely to be created by 9-11 memorial searchlights as by the shadows between a girl’s crossed legs, simultaneously conceals and spotlights meaning. Doppelgängers and multiple personalities abound. Two-way or compromised by hairline fractures, mirrors disorient and distort rather than reflect. Speakers connect to the others in their lives, most notably parents and lovers, with sincere ambivalence. Here, lying is always the quickest way to the truth.

Read the entire review here.