Book Review

The World is a Heartbreaker
by Sherwin Tjia
Coach House Books, 2005

REVIEWED BY: Jeanne Fronda

If poetry could be swallowed, then Sherwin Tjia has created the recipe. Tjia’s latest collection of poems, The World Is a Heartbreaker, offers up 1600 pseudohaikus, which are three-line poems that break free of the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, offering a confident new way for readers to experience the haiku.

Exploring the minutiae of life and the painful and sometimes comical outcomes of relationships, Tjia, who is also a painter, has created three-liners that can be gobbled up quickly and read anywhere, as the book is only 5.3 x 5.5 inches in size. But for what it lacks in its physical dimensions, The World Is a Heartbreaker makes up for through Tjia’s depth in expressing his thoughts about everyday life — and other people’s: Tjia noted in the book’s acknowledgements that some of the poem’s words were “loaned, given or . . . [stolen] from their mouths.”

From wanting to have sex with your ex (“sex /with the /ex”) to deciding whether or not to remove a bandage (“i’ve had a bandage/ on it but maybe/ i can take it off”), Tija has produced a humorous and often heartfelt catalogue of the thoughts that can go through one’s mind when experiencing an uneventful day or the most devastating or disturbing loss. He has a gift for turning the trivial into entertaining prose and for transforming everyday thoughts into absorbing, intense poetry. Quite a feat for a three-liner, but Tjia’s talent for churning out short, profound bursts of thought and amusing bite-size pieces of prose is unforgettable.

But it’s not all innocent, as Tjia includes a lot of sexual verse — some of which is outright dirty and delicious, such as describing female genitalia, and others that are playful and entertaining, such as musings about having sex with strangers (“i imagine/ fucking everyone/ i meet”). This isn’t for everyone, as some of the poems could offend those who don’t like to read or examine sexuality or sexual acts in general.

So it’s clear that Tjia makes his own rules, as the groundwork for the book is to oppose tradition by redefining the haiku. The poet’s non-traditional style is also obvious, as the pseudohaikus are presented without being segregated into separate sections or chapters. Rather, all the poems are presented together — 10 poems appear on each page in no particular order and without any clear, connecting topic — as one collection. The World Is a Heartbreaker is a book of poems that one can either devour in one reading (which is easy to do, as many of the humorous or sexual poems are irresistible to read) or flip through to blindly choose an amusing pseudohaiku of the day.

Though Tjia’s poems are brief and pleasing, and it’s a little too easy to get caught up in sifting through the poems to find the dirty ones, The World Is a Heartbreaker is an impressive example of inventive and bold writing.