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paul_viaf's review against another edition
5.0
Beast Meridian is a rich poetic offering from a highly talented Latinx writer, Vanessa Angelica Villareal.
A massive inspiration drawn from this collection lies in the poem Malinche, named after the indigenous woman said to have served as an interpreter, liaison, traitor, and ultimately the mother of all Mexicans. The poem is a linguistic, conceptual, and structural labyrinth. In the center is a blank square. Surrounding this blankness are the revelatory interpretations of Malinche’s role in the birthing of Mexico and her life via a complex square of texts that yields no easy way to read it. The order and possibilities of interpreting this work are numerous, as should be the way we view Malinche’s complexity. Here, Villarreal births, conceives, raises, and transmutes Malinche into all her complex possibilities, and through this does the same for Mexican-American culture and its women. One possible order of words reads, “I hunt my hunter the wilderness in myself I open my illness to the kingdom I am cleaved by the old and new world I entomb elders in the valley and grow mild flowers of their teeth I birth a betrayed nation…cause I make my nation my victim…I am she who betrays blood for a little bit of kingdom” (15). In this iteration, we see the complexity and can begin to empathize with Malinche’s position as a woman, mother, person, and symbol.
The rest of the poems are no less creative, jarring, emotionally trying, and linguistically complex. The mixture of Spanish, English, and Spanglish paint the scenes of these poems with the geographical movement, social integration, and cultural alienation that spawned them.
I highly recommend this collection of poems as they are as informative, emotionally, and linguistically complex as possible. I look forward to more of her work.
A massive inspiration drawn from this collection lies in the poem Malinche, named after the indigenous woman said to have served as an interpreter, liaison, traitor, and ultimately the mother of all Mexicans. The poem is a linguistic, conceptual, and structural labyrinth. In the center is a blank square. Surrounding this blankness are the revelatory interpretations of Malinche’s role in the birthing of Mexico and her life via a complex square of texts that yields no easy way to read it. The order and possibilities of interpreting this work are numerous, as should be the way we view Malinche’s complexity. Here, Villarreal births, conceives, raises, and transmutes Malinche into all her complex possibilities, and through this does the same for Mexican-American culture and its women. One possible order of words reads, “I hunt my hunter the wilderness in myself I open my illness to the kingdom I am cleaved by the old and new world I entomb elders in the valley and grow mild flowers of their teeth I birth a betrayed nation…cause I make my nation my victim…I am she who betrays blood for a little bit of kingdom” (15). In this iteration, we see the complexity and can begin to empathize with Malinche’s position as a woman, mother, person, and symbol.
The rest of the poems are no less creative, jarring, emotionally trying, and linguistically complex. The mixture of Spanish, English, and Spanglish paint the scenes of these poems with the geographical movement, social integration, and cultural alienation that spawned them.
I highly recommend this collection of poems as they are as informative, emotionally, and linguistically complex as possible. I look forward to more of her work.
jesshooves's review against another edition
“Thesis: I swallow a bee for each ill deed done. I am a hive walking. I strain to hear you over / the regret.”
—from poem “A Field if Onions: Brown Study.”
—from poem “A Field if Onions: Brown Study.”
ajaaidita's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Moves through riveting forms, images, voices, and deeply engages with research, both personal and familial. Definitely a book that will influence my own writing over the next few years. 🤍 especially moved by the language of animals, of beast-ing.
jd_brubaker's review against another edition
5.0
One of my biggest goals for 2021 is to read as much poetry as I can possibly stand. I'd like to read other books too (there are several on my to-be-read list that I'd like to dive into), but what I feel most compelled towards right now is poetry. In my own work and in my reading practice, poetry is where I want to invest most. As such, I've been reading one book of poetry every single week.
This last week, the book I read was this one. It's part of my reading list for my M.F.A. I'm in my last semester and that means I'm working on my creative thesis. That means I'm reading books that my mentor believes will aid me in revising, editing, and polishing my creative thesis, which is a collection of my own poetry documenting, discussing, dissecting, and processing my experiences with trauma. Which means a lot of the poetry books I'll be reading over the next several months will also be books that document and discuss trauma.
However, I'm not sure any of the books I read from this point forward will accomplish this in quite the same fashion as this phenomenal, surprising, breathtaking book. Beast Meridian is written in the voices of many Indigenous Mexican identities and their displacement among white colonialism. It's a book about family, about place, about connection and disconnection from the earth, about one (or many) Indigenous experiences of erasure, of silencing, and of violence. It is one of the most raw and honest books about grief and loss I have ever read.
One of the most astonishing things about this book is the deeply incantatory and reverent ways in which the speaker writes of her and her family's loss. Imagery that both pulled me into the story and also reminded me of my culpability - as a white woman - in their suffering. Imagery that is both visceral and ethereal, ecological and mythological. Villarreal doesn't just weave these images into her poetry, she structures each poem around them. It's as if the poems are a manifestation of the images, a photograph of words, a painting of memories, come to life through ink on parchment. It's a way of utilizing imagery that I have never encountered before.
The book is divided into three sections, each one built around a collection of different themes. And while I loved each section, I was most captivated and entranced by the last: The Way Back. In this section, the poems abandon their primary poetic form and take the shape of prosaic fragments. In these fragments, it's as though the speakers from all of the other poems are welded together and become a character of mythology: a single woman who is Othered to the point of being ostracized and outcast; a woman who find solace and acceptance in the earth, the land her ancestors lived in. In this isolation, this Otheredness, this return to the history that flows through her body, the speaker shapeshifts. She accepts the earth's embrace and begins to become one with it, becoming a beast of earth. It's an act of rebellion and of liberation because the speaker is refusing to assimilate to the expectations of white colonialism.
This section stands out to me the most because it is a kind of mythological reclaiming of generational identity. The rest of the book acknowledges and describes the generational trauma the speakers carry due to white colonialism, but it's this section that really reckons with the spiritual, physical, emotional, and generational trauma that is so often erased and ignored by white interpretations of Indigenous experience. These fragments of prose that span a total of ten pages take all of the grief written about in the two previous sections and uses them to forge an understanding of identity that is at once independent and communal. It feels like an incantation of rebirth, but not in the sense of something being made new; rather it feels like an incantation of return, a rebirth into what once was.
The very last poem of this section (and of the whole book) culminates in a statement of acceptance, a declaration of identity: "...after fate will have made an opus / of every brutal abandoning / I will succumb to the hunter in the profound: / a gallant leap into a copse of pines, the beast / born split, each arrow pierces two beings: / in wound, the animal turns constellation; / the feminine, obscene." This is where grief leads the speaker. This is where grief blends with history. This is where history reclaims its breath in the body of an Indigenous woman who, from the previous ten poems, has rebecome a daughter (and now mother) of earth. And while this book emanates an atmosphere of reclamation, it also doesn't minimize or shy away from the generations of trauma that fill her (their) body (bodies).
Read this book. I found myself gasping out loud at multiple points, not merely for the beauty of the writing, but also from the raw honesty that doesn't hold back from accusation. It's a phenomenal piece of work, a truly breathtaking compilation of stories. If you read it, you will be a different person by the end of the book.
This last week, the book I read was this one. It's part of my reading list for my M.F.A. I'm in my last semester and that means I'm working on my creative thesis. That means I'm reading books that my mentor believes will aid me in revising, editing, and polishing my creative thesis, which is a collection of my own poetry documenting, discussing, dissecting, and processing my experiences with trauma. Which means a lot of the poetry books I'll be reading over the next several months will also be books that document and discuss trauma.
However, I'm not sure any of the books I read from this point forward will accomplish this in quite the same fashion as this phenomenal, surprising, breathtaking book. Beast Meridian is written in the voices of many Indigenous Mexican identities and their displacement among white colonialism. It's a book about family, about place, about connection and disconnection from the earth, about one (or many) Indigenous experiences of erasure, of silencing, and of violence. It is one of the most raw and honest books about grief and loss I have ever read.
One of the most astonishing things about this book is the deeply incantatory and reverent ways in which the speaker writes of her and her family's loss. Imagery that both pulled me into the story and also reminded me of my culpability - as a white woman - in their suffering. Imagery that is both visceral and ethereal, ecological and mythological. Villarreal doesn't just weave these images into her poetry, she structures each poem around them. It's as if the poems are a manifestation of the images, a photograph of words, a painting of memories, come to life through ink on parchment. It's a way of utilizing imagery that I have never encountered before.
The book is divided into three sections, each one built around a collection of different themes. And while I loved each section, I was most captivated and entranced by the last: The Way Back. In this section, the poems abandon their primary poetic form and take the shape of prosaic fragments. In these fragments, it's as though the speakers from all of the other poems are welded together and become a character of mythology: a single woman who is Othered to the point of being ostracized and outcast; a woman who find solace and acceptance in the earth, the land her ancestors lived in. In this isolation, this Otheredness, this return to the history that flows through her body, the speaker shapeshifts. She accepts the earth's embrace and begins to become one with it, becoming a beast of earth. It's an act of rebellion and of liberation because the speaker is refusing to assimilate to the expectations of white colonialism.
This section stands out to me the most because it is a kind of mythological reclaiming of generational identity. The rest of the book acknowledges and describes the generational trauma the speakers carry due to white colonialism, but it's this section that really reckons with the spiritual, physical, emotional, and generational trauma that is so often erased and ignored by white interpretations of Indigenous experience. These fragments of prose that span a total of ten pages take all of the grief written about in the two previous sections and uses them to forge an understanding of identity that is at once independent and communal. It feels like an incantation of rebirth, but not in the sense of something being made new; rather it feels like an incantation of return, a rebirth into what once was.
The very last poem of this section (and of the whole book) culminates in a statement of acceptance, a declaration of identity: "...after fate will have made an opus / of every brutal abandoning / I will succumb to the hunter in the profound: / a gallant leap into a copse of pines, the beast / born split, each arrow pierces two beings: / in wound, the animal turns constellation; / the feminine, obscene." This is where grief leads the speaker. This is where grief blends with history. This is where history reclaims its breath in the body of an Indigenous woman who, from the previous ten poems, has rebecome a daughter (and now mother) of earth. And while this book emanates an atmosphere of reclamation, it also doesn't minimize or shy away from the generations of trauma that fill her (their) body (bodies).
Read this book. I found myself gasping out loud at multiple points, not merely for the beauty of the writing, but also from the raw honesty that doesn't hold back from accusation. It's a phenomenal piece of work, a truly breathtaking compilation of stories. If you read it, you will be a different person by the end of the book.
tiffany6454's review against another edition
5.0
An impressive and masterful work that interweaves identity, race, immigration, research and emotion into a beautiful story of survival. A book that testifies of the resilience of immigrants and their families in this country that cherishes roots while speaking to the realities that many immigrants face. My words can’t adequately describe this beautiful collection of poems. Wow!
jenniferlynnkrohn's review
5.0
Villarreal's poems are able to evoke both the mythic and the contemporary. The language and images in this poems are gorgeous. This is the rare collection where I loved almost every poem. While this is only my first reading, I do suspect that my appreciation for these poems will grow multiple readings.
bookiecharm's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Grief, Homophobia, Racial slurs, and Racism
Minor: Death, Sexual violence, and Violence
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