A first collection, Picture Bride (1983), which won the Yale Younger Poets Award and a National Book Critics Circle award nomination, personalizes the slow assimilation of women into society. Song draws inspiration from modern Southwestern painter Georgia O'Keeffe's flower portraits. Song names each section for a flower and exalts O'Keeffe's work in "From the White Place" and "Blue and White Lines after O'Keeffe."
After marrying medical student Douglas McHarg Davenport, Song composed a second anthology, Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988), which develops her meditative vision while furthering themes of family history. With island poet Juliet S. Kono, she coedited and contributed poetry and prose to Sister Stew (1991). Three years later, she published a third volume, School Figures (1994). Her writing has earned the Hawaii Award for Literature and a Shelley Memorial Award.
