Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Malinda Markham's peoms are inspired in part by her fascination with Japanese language, art, and literature. Her reactions to and interpretations of that country's history, culture, and people are in these verses, echoing with the voices and silences of women across time. Markham imagines the experiences of many women: a geisha laments her past in "Geisha Considered as Making," as a mother laments for her daughter's future in "Yield to This." Markham is intrigued with how language tries but ultimately fails to hold memory in place. She grapples with the translation of words and feeling and shows how this failure also brings a searching for belief - a word that repeats throughout these poems - in a world that cannot allow it. Writes Cole Swenson, "Markham's language has the delicacy of the fine bones of the inner ear; it is, itself, a form of listening - to insects, birds, traffic, to the world. Her listening brings things into being, catching the nuances of change, from season to season, culture to culture, impression to language. This is a radiant collection."
About the Author
Malinda Markham received her MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. She has been published in the Paris Review, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She teaches at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo.
Table of Contents
'contents
Foreword by Carol Muske-Dukes xi
I.
Woman Bathing 3
Instruction (Against Limited Disaster) 5
Being Glass 6
Things That Seldom Remain in Place 7
Geisha Considered as Making 9
Calculate Where to Begin 10
Topographical Concern 11
Anatomy of Resemblance 12
Postcard—a memory carried in the body 13
Equation 14
Recalling the Start 15
Before the River Freezes in Place 17
Yield to This 19
II.
The Field of Choice. And Choosing. 23
Being Glass, the Glint of Sun 26
The Border Between 27
Gift 28
Prime Movement and Other Divinations 29
What Magnitudes Sing Us 31
Affair Ending in Touch 32
Because the Cup Is Furred, I Cannot Drink 33
Museum Rehearsal 34
Postcard—Without Grace 39
III.
Gold Filigree Sharp on the Neck 43
Conversation in Likeness 45
Hôtel des Pyrénées 46
Oblivion Fruit 48
A History of Vinegar and Reprieve 49
Persimmons and a Kind of Regret 53
Survival and Disembodied Existence 54
Mistranslate (Because Meaning Is Not Enough) 55
To Recant What Is Needed 57
Five Stories of Demand 58
First Received 60
The Perceptible World 61\n
'