Scan barcode
rudyyy's review
2.0
This book missed for me, mostly for formatting/use of space reasons. I just didn’t get it, which happens with poetry sometimes!!
shanviolinlove's review
5.0
Heartbreaking and quieting. Diane Khoi Nguyen impresses upon you the problem of negative space that the dead occupy; the poems of her brother's suicide try to make sense (or show the futility of such attempts) to reconcile with such tangible absence. The content themselves are evocative, considering the shape and shapelessness of water, grief, empty houses within us; but she also shows this through spaces she carves (loved the line "this craving carves a cave") on the actual page with the gaps between lines and sentences. Most visually powerful of all are family photos in which the boy is cut out (he had cut himself out) and the ghostly shape of his absence draws the eye to it. Nguyen makes sense of this negative space by filling it with words, and then filling the backdrop of the photo with the brother-sized hole with words: a picture of the poet's endeavor to fill what would otherwise be left unspoken or unspeakable.
mepresley's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
4.0
Some of the experimentation with form just wasn't for me and made the poems harder to read. Yes, it forced me to slow down more, which is always nice, but I'm just not a fan of breaking words off in the middle or black text against the background of a grey photograph. On the other hand, I loved what she did in terms of repetition with difference -- for example, "bewilder, we bewilder what we fill in what bewilders us to fill in what" (21) and "it keeps me alive it keeps me alive it keeps me alive it keeps" (37)--and these poems all held together very well, speaking to one another, and to grief and loss.
My favorite poems were "Triptych" (#1), "Family Ties," "Triptych" (#2), "An Empty House is a Debt," and "Future Self."
"Triptych" (#1)
a woman still
burying herself
pulling off the world
like fly's wings
"Triptych" (#2)
what may sound between appearance and disappearance, between sound and silence, as something
that is nearly nothing--
"An Empty House is a Debt"
What is a maze if there is nothing to find in the maze.
"Future Self"
Mending in a daybreak that casts every shadow
except your own;
the starved fern that keeps growing,
uselessly--
My favorite poems were "Triptych" (#1), "Family Ties," "Triptych" (#2), "An Empty House is a Debt," and "Future Self."
"Triptych" (#1)
a woman still
burying herself
pulling off the world
like fly's wings
"Triptych" (#2)
what may sound between appearance and disappearance, between sound and silence, as something
that is nearly nothing--
"An Empty House is a Debt"
What is a maze if there is nothing to find in the maze.
"Future Self"
Mending in a daybreak that casts every shadow
except your own;
the starved fern that keeps growing,
uselessly--
frogjeanine's review
5.0
this was genuinely painful to read, and being able to actually talk to nguyen about her experiences was insane. easily the best book from WoW