Bowling Pin Fire

By Andy Quan

In his second book of poems, Andy Quan recounts a series of firsts: first time listening to Joni Mitchell's Blue, first loss of a friend, first dance with a man. Building on earlier explorations of memory, sexuality, and culture that are the signatures of his best work, Bowling Pin Fire transcribes the arc of one man's life, from growing up Chinese in Vancouver, to seeing the world through the lens of fearless, free-spirited youth, to arriving, as we all must, at the initial cautionary glimmerings of midlife. The rituals and rivalries of grade school, the later experiments with everything new, the close-knit dynamics of family and far-flung friends, the happenstances and fidelities of love, the elation and hangover of travel to unexpected quadrants of the globe all prompt the quality of reflection necessary to the leading of a truly examined, contemporary life. Andy Quan asks of himself and of everyone: how to be fully in and of the moment? Bowling Pin Fire is filled not with empty answers but with the good fortune of worldly insight.