Review by jayisreading - Primordial: Poems

jayisreading 's review for:

Primordial: Poems by Mai Der Vang

4.75

challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

“Hmong, who are you? Where do you / come from? Have you a geography, a country in [which] to be / Hmong?” (From “Origin”)

Like Vang’s previous collection, Yellow Rain, it’s a bit difficult to describe the intensity and emotional impact of her poems in Primordial, though I did find her newest collection relatively more straightforward when it comes to accessibility. With that said, Primordial is a beautiful reflection on surviving, longing, and seeking refuge and home. Using the saola—a highly endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos—as metaphor, Vang explores these themes to consider what it means for the Hmong people to be in a similar position. Simultaneously, there’s much to be said about her observations about our relationship with nature as humans that intertwine with her thoughts on Hmong history and identity.

What I truly appreciate about Vang’s poetry is how she experiments with form in such interesting ways. In this particular collection, she has a new approach that I’ve just been referring to as the “node” poems, which each appear as a line with various nodes with stanzas branching off of it. What’s especially fascinating about these poems is that the stanzas fit into the syntax of the title while expanding on its meaning.

Wonderfully layered in meaning to give the reader plenty to think about, Primordial is definitely a highlight in poetry releases this year.

Some favorites: “I Arrive to Saola by Way of War,” “Deduction Remains,” “Medicine,” “Hmong, an Ethnographic Study of Other,” “Forest of Beginnings,” “I Understand This Light to Be My Home,” “Evolution, Absence,” “Origin,” “By Way of the Vivid Wilds,” “Saola Grows Up in California: Daughter of Hmong Refugees,” “Look to the New Moon,” and the “Node” poems

Read for the Sealey Challenge.

Content Warnings