Tasting Moments by Pamela Pan

Pamela Pan’s poetry collection jumps out of the starting gate from her very first poem, challenging us to “Release the ‘I can’t’ shackles.” Family ties are delicately described: the culinary wisdom of her mother and grandmother, a trip home to Tianjin where healing her mother helps her heal herself, description of an uncle who was her bulwark at a time when she was most fragile, a wedding anniversary where the celebration of time rejoices each moment spent together. She shares when a mother learns her son only has one hundred days left to live, compares passengers on a train to the sorghum of the earth, describes time as having slipped through one’s fingers “like kernels of golden unhusked rice.” Her lyrical poem of a close friend who takes her own life, in Snow Lotus, is heartrending as we get to know the girl, her innocence, her beauty, and her inability to protect herself from the undeserved shame cast by others. Pamela’s deft use of metaphor rouses us, insists that we feel what the narrator in each of her poems feels; this is a collection to be savored and read over and over again, find the nuggets you’ve missed the first go around, for there are many.

–Linda Drattell, award-winning poet and author, Remember This Day and The Lighter Side of Horse Manure

Pamela Pan’s Tasting Moments is more than a poetry collection. Her life stories, filled with family, friends, and cherished memories, are a priceless treasure of wisdom passed through generations. Pamela’s poems are deeply moving portrayals of our world and society, often bringing readers, such as myself, to tears. So, please have a tissue ready, especially for poems like 100 Days. Pamela’s observance of human behavior and her gift to articulate such heavy and diverse emotions from those she’s met is impressive, and I applaud her. Her poems speak to the universal emotions we all experience, making us feel understood and less alone.

–Monique Rardin Richardson, author of When Then Became Now and Pieces of Me.

I will read Tasting the Moments by Pamela Pan over and over. These are poems of resilience, grounded in deep affection for her family and people around her.

She sings the praises of strong individuals—her grandma who taught the life-affirming power of food, the uncle who fought “the merciless corrosive agent of time,” workers and peasants who are “the sorghum of this planet”—while reminding each one of us “you are the swan on the lake, the queen and king of your own life.” I highly recommend this collection of poems for Pan’s honesty, imagery and passion for writing.

–Constance Hanstedt, Author of Treading Water and Don’t Leave Yet, How My Mother’s Alzheimer’s Opened My Heart.