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richardleis's review
3.0
This is a short book of poetry that I think demonstrates well the idea that a poet and her poems should teach the reader how to read her poetry. The use of repetition and allegory, simple language, and returning to similar themes quickly trained me how to read the book. In the process, I did find it occasionally too repetitive. In these spots, I tried to enjoy the sound of the repetition, the same words again and again, sometimes with building variations, leading eventually to insight. Also helpful were concluding pages of prose that summarized some of the issues addressed in each poem.
In "a younger man, an older man, and a woman," acrobats hang off of and balance each other in feats of strength and balance, lending their motion and intimacy to the poet's proposal for a unified society that is aware of their differences, just as a younger man, an older man, and a woman are different from each other, but can work together with graceful outcome. The extended metaphor is full of tension generated by the different configurations of the three acrobats, and it leads eventually to a universal "we" that eliminates age and gender.
This poem and the other poems disturbed me, though. Spahr is not a native of Hawaii and outsider status that she engages with in her poems. This approach, however, seemed to lead to a sense of narrator that is elitist and entitled, though the narrator is gesturing to the wellbeing and rights of the native people. It is as if after oppression and outsider arrives to insist on unity, a unity that the native people might not want. Maybe they want justice, or maybe they just want to be left alone. The poet also co-opts local phases and concepts, a process that itself gives a sense of colonial entitlement. What is meant as "Look, I'm must like you because I can use your language and concepts, too" comes across as cold and unfeeling.
But I don't know anything at all about Hawaiian politics or racial interactions, so my reading is immediately suspect. The poetry leaves me uneasy about a topic I don't know anything about, while admiring of the craft, and particularly impressed with the use of grounded movement and ideas and objects reflecting much larger topics and abstractions.
In "a younger man, an older man, and a woman," acrobats hang off of and balance each other in feats of strength and balance, lending their motion and intimacy to the poet's proposal for a unified society that is aware of their differences, just as a younger man, an older man, and a woman are different from each other, but can work together with graceful outcome. The extended metaphor is full of tension generated by the different configurations of the three acrobats, and it leads eventually to a universal "we" that eliminates age and gender.
This poem and the other poems disturbed me, though. Spahr is not a native of Hawaii and outsider status that she engages with in her poems. This approach, however, seemed to lead to a sense of narrator that is elitist and entitled, though the narrator is gesturing to the wellbeing and rights of the native people. It is as if after oppression and outsider arrives to insist on unity, a unity that the native people might not want. Maybe they want justice, or maybe they just want to be left alone. The poet also co-opts local phases and concepts, a process that itself gives a sense of colonial entitlement. What is meant as "Look, I'm must like you because I can use your language and concepts, too" comes across as cold and unfeeling.
But I don't know anything at all about Hawaiian politics or racial interactions, so my reading is immediately suspect. The poetry leaves me uneasy about a topic I don't know anything about, while admiring of the craft, and particularly impressed with the use of grounded movement and ideas and objects reflecting much larger topics and abstractions.
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