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jenna_le 's review for:
Oculus: Poems
by Sally Wen Mao
I've been waiting years for this book to come out. It's one of the most thematically cohesive poetry collections around: these are poems largely about voyeurism, about how our desire to look into other people's lives can veer into pretty morbid territory sometimes, especially when differences in gender and race tint the lens through which we gaze, and how this becomes especially complicated in our modern era with its advanced technology (webcams, etc.). The heart of the collection is a series of a dozen poems written in the voice of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star: these poems explore Wong's frustration at being relegated to second-tier, racially stereotyped roles in a whitewashed Hollywood; furthermore, exhibiting the best tendencies of speculative poetry, these poems imagine what would happen if Wong had a time machine that allowed her to travel to the future, to meet and commune with kindred spirits Josephine Baker and Bruce Lee, to comment wryly and wistfully on the persistent racial inequities present in the movie industry today. The language here is often gorgeously romantic in its unfulfilled yearning, especially in the poems' masterful endings: "When the show is over, / the applause is meant for stars / but my ovation is for the shadows"; "I've never cared for love stories. / I praise a story of heartbreak. I praise / how beauty looks during a blackout"; "We had to prove / ourselves different...for what? In the end, we still pined for shelter. / In the end, we still guarded our bones against the blaring thunder."
Wong's story is juxtaposed with other instances in history where Asian Americans were subjected to a harsh and prejudiced gaze: e.g., the story of Afong Moy, the first Chinese immigrant to the U.S., who was placed in a box so that the curious public could buy tickets to gawk at her. In this multi-part poem, as elsewhere in the book, the complicity of the medical community is indicted, among other things:
They wanted
to see my feet uncovered, can you believe
the nerve? The podiatrists, the reporters, begged
for a glimpse. At the men, I snickered.
At the women, I smiled. They swooned, blushed,
as if they swallowed Sichuan peppercorns.
Their corsets were killing them.
The racial politics that shaped Moy's life are dissected in all their nuance and complexity, a testament to the intensive research that must have undergirded the writing of these poems:
[P.T. Barnum] questioned whether I'd ever
been a Lady. Brought another family of Celestials,
advertised their veracity to discredit me.
As if there couldn't be two respectable Chinese ladies
in America at the same time. To promote
one, strip the dignity of the other. There was no word
for tokenism in those days of yore.
Other examples of problematic voyeurism explored in this book include more recent incidents, such as the 2012 case of Korean American father Ki-Suk Han, a photograph of whose horrifying death (he was pushed in front of an oncoming subway train) was blazoned on the front page of the New York Post. Reading this news story at the time it happened had a big psychological impact on me, so I felt a bit of consolation at seeing it addressed in verse: "Lately, I can't go underground without shielding / my body with my hands...." Another recent controversy addressed is that of Bodies: The Exhibition: "Their / mouths are blood diamonds," Mao writes, humanizing the Chinese men (rumored to have included executed dissidents) whose dissected and plastinated bodies comprise the exhibition. "Sir...your shorn life passes through me / in one thrush. Boy who flunked his college // entrance exams. Man who ate abalone / from the can...."
This is dark stuff, but the book surprised me by ending on a hopeful note: people put down their cell phones for a while and find true human connection again; the Asian American poet-speaker sees Anna May Wong's face on a poster and feels connected to the city around her despite all the obstacles: "if I can recognize / her face,...then I am not a stranger here."
Wong's story is juxtaposed with other instances in history where Asian Americans were subjected to a harsh and prejudiced gaze: e.g., the story of Afong Moy, the first Chinese immigrant to the U.S., who was placed in a box so that the curious public could buy tickets to gawk at her. In this multi-part poem, as elsewhere in the book, the complicity of the medical community is indicted, among other things:
They wanted
to see my feet uncovered, can you believe
the nerve? The podiatrists, the reporters, begged
for a glimpse. At the men, I snickered.
At the women, I smiled. They swooned, blushed,
as if they swallowed Sichuan peppercorns.
Their corsets were killing them.
The racial politics that shaped Moy's life are dissected in all their nuance and complexity, a testament to the intensive research that must have undergirded the writing of these poems:
[P.T. Barnum] questioned whether I'd ever
been a Lady. Brought another family of Celestials,
advertised their veracity to discredit me.
As if there couldn't be two respectable Chinese ladies
in America at the same time. To promote
one, strip the dignity of the other. There was no word
for tokenism in those days of yore.
Other examples of problematic voyeurism explored in this book include more recent incidents, such as the 2012 case of Korean American father Ki-Suk Han, a photograph of whose horrifying death (he was pushed in front of an oncoming subway train) was blazoned on the front page of the New York Post. Reading this news story at the time it happened had a big psychological impact on me, so I felt a bit of consolation at seeing it addressed in verse: "Lately, I can't go underground without shielding / my body with my hands...." Another recent controversy addressed is that of Bodies: The Exhibition: "Their / mouths are blood diamonds," Mao writes, humanizing the Chinese men (rumored to have included executed dissidents) whose dissected and plastinated bodies comprise the exhibition. "Sir...your shorn life passes through me / in one thrush. Boy who flunked his college // entrance exams. Man who ate abalone / from the can...."
This is dark stuff, but the book surprised me by ending on a hopeful note: people put down their cell phones for a while and find true human connection again; the Asian American poet-speaker sees Anna May Wong's face on a poster and feels connected to the city around her despite all the obstacles: "if I can recognize / her face,...then I am not a stranger here."