{"id":130,"date":"2013-10-16T00:52:40","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T04:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=130"},"modified":"2013-10-16T00:52:40","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T04:52:40","slug":"review-of-phyla-of-joy-by-karen-an-hwei-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=130","title":{"rendered":"Review of Phyla of Joy by Karen An-hwei Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lee<\/a><\/p>\n

Karen An-hwei Lee. Phyla of Joy. <\/i>Tupelo Press, 2012. 63 pgs. $16.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Phyla of Joy, <\/i>Karen An-hwei Lee\u2019s third collection, is filled with things\u2014bamboo flowers, oolong tea, honeybees, salt. The poems are exceedingly visual, and much of the music in the poems corresponds to the tightly concrete\u2014yet also seductively puzzling\u2014images. Many of the poems are contemplative in tone, but they develop their meaning (if meaning is what they\u2019re aiming for) through juxtaposition of imagery rather than explanation. I found myself rereading several of the poems, sometimes because I found the language so attractive, sometimes because I didn\u2019t quite understand; most often, I experienced both responses simultaneously. I realized, eventually, that these are poems to sit with, to absorb, to pick up and put down and pick up again. Sometimes the lines don\u2019t make literal sense, but they are nevertheless interesting\u2014\u201cMonday is where camphor comes from,\u201d\u2014until, usually, as we read from one line to the next, the poem\u2019s logic rises up in us as dawn rises up, tentatively, from earth.<\/p>\n

Many of the poems engage our curiosity immediately. \u201cPrayer of Resistance\u201d begins with this question: \u201cHow do we fly to heaven \/ with the resistance of weather?\u201d \u201cDream of Metasequoia\u201d claims that \u201cTwo o\u2019clock is the weight of empathy.\u201d \u201cSunday Is\u201d completes its title with \u201cA kind of raiment.\u201d I find myself measuring the \u201cweight of empathy\u201d\u2014it is softer than the glare of high noon, more hopeful than that oppressive dark night, but it is not nothing either. Cupping empathy, our hands sink slightly. And I find myself considering Sunday\u2019s \u201craiment,\u201d a garment to wrap ourselves in to signal intention, attention to our internal lives. I anticipate an answer to the opening question in \u201cPrayer of Resistance,\u201d but read this couplet instead: \u201cWedding gases, says a child. \/ No, they\u2019re noble gases.\u201d These lines, too, I find curious, though I\u2019m uncertain how they relate to either heaven or \u201cthe resistance of weather.\u201d Like many of the poems in the collection, \u201cPrayer of Resistance\u201d establishes its sense via detour and deflection; it meanders toward meaning, teasing the reader perhaps, as the poem resists easy penetration and the reader resists meaninglessness. The speaker suggests that \u201cthe resistance we meet in life \/ winks at the universe,\u201d and I find myself winked at too in my determination to understand, to resist the poem\u2019s ultimate conclusion, \u201cbefore black holes swallow all \/ we remember since birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the poems are more immediately accessible. \u201cInvocation,\u201d for example, opens with a straightforward statement, \u201cMy body isn\u2019t shaped like a violin, said the girl.\u201d Although we don\u2019t yet know who this girl is\u2014or if it matters who she is\u2014the relationships among the lines are more direct than they are in many of the poems. The poem continues, \u201cCurve in my hip isn\u2019t deep enough, profundo. <\/i>\/\/ One blue world, my curve vanishes. \/ You aren\u2019t a violin, said the mother.\u201d The girl offers several negative evaluations of her body, each time the mother suggesting that the girl can\u2019t be reduced to figurative language, as desirable as that language might be. The language in this poem is <\/i>beautiful, but the girl is after more than beautiful language, as is the mother. The poem ends ironically, \u201cwithout the pressure of metaphors \/ \/ invoking paternal shadows, absent figures of speech, veritas.\u201d <\/i>At some level, of course, all language is metaphorical. And declaring something absent brings it into presence. The truth of the poem lies both in its metaphors and in their denial.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most playful poem in the collection is \u201cTheories of the Soul,\u201d which references ideas of Kant, Aquinas, Heraclitus, and others. It helps to know that Thomas Aquinas was taunted by his companions as a \u201cdumb ox,\u201d for in the poem, Aquinas \u201cfeels his soul \/ sailing out of his head \/\/ floating near the roof \/ where a blue ox wings by.\u201d Perhaps in attempting to describe the soul, each thinker is correct. By its end, however, the poem becomes a love poem, to Aquinas and other theologians, yes, but also to another unidentified \u201cyou,\u201d the \u201ctrue friend\u201d referred to in the poem\u2019s epigraph. \u201cIf you \/ are a soul in two bodies,\u201d the speaker speculates and then continues, \u201clife is more complex \/ and we must labor \/\/ twice in the field of sorrow \/ after sleep, bath, and a glass \/\/ as Aquinas whispers, the things \/ we love tell us who we are.<\/i>\u201d The speaker has named this you whom she loves, and has, now, revealed who she is.<\/p>\n

Phyla of Joy <\/i>is unusually unified\u2014through form, style, repeated reference. The writing is spare and satisfying and suggestive. Although I occasionally wished for more guidance from the speaker, I much more often appreciated the quiet patience the poems encourage.<\/p>\n

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Karen An-hwei Lee. Phyla of Joy. Tupelo Press, 2012. 63 pgs. $16.95 Reviewed by Lynn Domina Phyla of Joy, Karen An-hwei Lee\u2019s third collection, is filled with things\u2014bamboo flowers, oolong tea, honeybees, salt. The poems are exceedingly visual, and much of the music in the poems corresponds to the tightly concrete\u2014yet also seductively puzzling\u2014images. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}