Jane Wong – Lantern Review Blog

December 19, 2022

Remembering Thirteen Years of LANTERN REVIEW

Remembering 13 Years of Lantern Review. Black-and-white headshots of Michelle Penaloza, Jane Wong, Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, Luisa A. Igloria, Eugenia Leigh, Wendy Chin-Tanner, Lee Herrick, Cat Wei, Monica Ong, Joan Kwon Glass, Rajiv Mohabir, Karen Zheng, Eddie Kim — Contributors & Staff Reflect on What LANTERN REVIEW Has Meant to Them

As Lantern Review wraps up its final season, we thought we’d take some time to reflect back on the past thirteen years. We asked some of our community to share about what the magazine has meant to them, and we were touched by the overwhelming kindness and generosity of their responses.

A common thread among our contributors’ and staff members’ remarks was the space Lantern Review has created over the years for Asian American writers.

“I am so grateful to have been a contributor to Lantern Review’s issue on Asian American futures,” said Issue 9.3 contributor Cat Wei. “In the wake of anti-Asian hate, this space created by Lantern Review has been part of the important work of reclamation—of our own stories and pasts and future stories. Thank you for the beautiful vocoder you’ve shared with the world.”

Former staff columnist Kelsay Elizabeth Myers also touched upon the safe space that Lantern Review provided to explore, experiment, and play with the textuality and materiality of one’s identity:

“For me, Lantern Review meant a refuge: a place where I could be free to speak my mind and shine my own light among others in the Asian American poetry community. LR was one of the first Asian American journals I discovered after my initial experiences with racism in my twenties, and it was the first one dedicated to poetry and craft. It gave me a brave space to form radical ideas about poetry and make sense of my own personal experiences before I knew what a brave space was. And in the LR space, I was given the opportunity to experiment with my own craft ideas between poetry and creative nonfiction, between the whiteness and the Korean aspects of my identity, and between the ideas of identity and selfhood that still influence my life and work to this day.”

Two-time contributor Rajiv Mohabir discussed the importance of the community that Lantern Review has cultivated, especially with the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the past few years:

“Lantern Review has been an important way that we have been able to see ourselves. There are so few literary journals where Asian American voices can congregate, and LR has been one that has been remarkable and culturally responsive to us in such trying times. I loved reading the poems and reviews of writers who I know and being exposed to those I had not yet encountered. I will forever be grateful to the editors and the community that they cultivated.”

For some, being part of a community has created lifelong friendships and allowed them to explore new voices within the Asian American poetry world:

“In 2011, I’d just moved back to the US after fifteen years in the UK and ten years out of poetry when I saw that Lantern Review was looking for a staff interviewer,” said former staff writer Wendy Chin-Tanner. “I got the position, and what I thought would be a helpful reintroduction to the APIA poetry landscape quickly became much, much more. Through working with Iris and Mia, and interviewing poets like Patrick Rosal, Lee Herrick, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kimiko Hahn, and Don Mee Choi, to name just a few, I was embraced by a community in which I’ve built lasting, treasured relationships. Thank you, Iris and Mia, for the opportunity and the friendship, and for creating such a beautiful, welcoming space for APIA poetry.”

Karen Zheng, current staff reader and former intern, made similar remarks. “Lantern Review is a warm and uplifting journal providing a space for the Asian and Asian American community,” she said. “It brought me a sense of belonging amongst other poetry circles. I always recommended people read Lantern Review if they get a chance. Some of the best voices of our time have emerged through Lantern Review.“

For Issue 9.1 contributor Joan Kwon Glass, Lantern Review has provided a kind of community she didn’t always have access to. She’s even implemented poems published in our journal as part of her poetry class curriculum.

“Lantern Review has been the kind of beloved community for writers that I dreamt of as a child. Growing up in a Midwestern home as a mixed-race Korean American girl, I lived in between lands. Finding a home for my writing about this specific experience as well as having my book appear on their Asian American poetry blog have been two of my fondest publication memories. LR has also served as a treasure trove of work from which I have pulled to teach poetry classes. I will miss it and always be grateful for guest editor Eugenia Leigh and editor/founder Iris Law.”

Others wrote about their personal experiences reading each issue that Lantern Review has published.

“I adore Lantern Review—each issue feels like sitting at the dinner table with so many of my Asian American beloveds,” said two-time contributor Jane Wong. “Thank you for championing emerging writers and for shouting out fresh books! We love you!”

Issue 6 contributor Lee Herrick also noted what it’s felt like to him after reading each issue.

“Lantern Review has been a source of nourishment, light, and inspiration,” Herrick said. “I felt renewed after each issue, edited with such care, full of such necessary writing. I will miss it, but I am grateful for the ten-plus years of publishing stellar Asian American writing. You helped shape American poetry and countless Asian Americans’ creative lives. Thank you for everything, Lantern Review.”

Luisa A. Igloria, whose work has been published in Lantern Review three times, touched upon the myriad of literary and technical representation within the pages of each issue.

“Since its inception, Lantern Review has been a bright light and booster of new Asian American poetries and hybrid work. Every issue has been such a beautiful and generous curation of some of the most exciting work of Asian American poets writing today. I feel so fortunate to have had my work included in Lantern Review‘s pages; I know I’ll miss it; and I hope Iris and Mia will find ways to continue the important work they’ve done, beyond LR. Thank you!”

Lastly, several people mentioned the platform Lantern Review has provided for all different types of poetry and the ways in which the journal has impacted them as a writer.

Issue 9.1 contributor Eddie Kim said, “Lantern Review lives true to its namesake. It gave me a platform through which I could be seen as a poet—something I only truly appreciated when a creative writing teacher told me their students enjoyed my poem ‘In America’ in the (at the time) latest issue of Lantern Review. It was such a nourishing feeling knowing others were reading my work in a classroom (and that they were writing students made it extra special). Even though other people reading your work is the obvious goal when sending out writing, it’s not always clear if it’s actually working (especially if you don’t have a known name). That offering was and is deeply meaningful to me, and I’m grateful to Lantern Review for providing the thoughtful and generous space that made a moment like that happen.”

Issues 2 and 10 contributor Michelle Peñaloza and Issue 3 contributor Monica Ong both spoke about what it meant to them that Lantern Review was among their first publications.

“Lantern Review was one of my first publications and has always been so special to me as a journal created by and publishing Asian American poets,” said Peñaloza. “I appreciate so much the support, love, and care Iris and Mia have shared and shown in the many beautiful years they published Lantern Review. A memory: those amazing stickers with folks’ last names—Ong & de la Paz & . . . etc. [at the 2019 Asian American Literature Festival]. I loved those!”

Ong wrote, “Lantern Review was the first literary journal to publish my visual poetry. Prior to that, I’d shared work primarily in the context of art gallery exhibitions. The editorial team was thoughtful about providing a user interface that allowed readers to zoom in, explore, and read the work closely. Most importantly, they were willing to broaden ideas of what a poem could be for its readership. The editors’ openness to hybridity and Asian American voices contributes vital space to an expansive, complex, and innovative generation of writers making exciting work today. Taking those first steps as a budding poet with Lantern Review alongside writers I truly admire has been meaningful, and I’m so grateful for their continued heartfelt care for Asian American literature throughout the years.”

Lantern Review has always sought to uplift new voices and curate themes that encourage writers, and readers, to examine Asian America. 2021 guest editor Eugenia Leigh made note of this while looking back on her own involvement with the journal over the years.

“When Iris A. Law and Mia Ayumi Malhotra launched Lantern Review in 2010, they created and sustained an incredibly dynamic, necessary, and visionary space for Asian American poetry,” Leigh said. “They published Asian American poets before the mainstream literary world caught on to our power. Lantern Review’s very first issue showcased early poems by poets such as Matthew Olzmann and Ocean Vuong. This was years before Matthew’s first book, Mezzanines, was published. Months before Ocean’s first chapbook, Burnings. Lantern Review published one of my earliest poems as well, in their third issue, three years before my own first book. In 2021, I had the privilege of joining their team as a guest editor to curate three issues highlighting the idea of ‘Asian American Futures.’ This theme challenged us to look deeply at and celebrate the future of Asian Americans through contemporary Asian American poetry, and while I grieve the end of LR’s journey, I am grateful for this call to look forward. What a spectacular future Asian American poetry has thanks, in part, to the work of Iris, Mia, and the LR staff. Lantern Review amplified our voices when so few people and places would. Its contribution to our literary landscape was, without exaggeration, revolutionary.”

Though Lantern Review is coming to a close, we cannot wait to see what the new year and beyond will bring to the Asian American poetry community. We’re grateful to all those who have submitted, read, and supported Lantern Review throughout the years, and we hope that you’ll always stay hungry for the future of Asian American arts and letters.

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What are some of your favorite memories of Lantern Review? Share them with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@lanternreview).

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As an Asian American–focused publication, Lantern Review stands for diversity within the literary world. In solidarity with other communities of color and in an effort to connect our readers with a wider range of voices, we recommend a different collection by a non-Asian-American-identified BIPOC poet in each blog post.

June 9, 2022

“Lighting an Altar Space”: A Conversation with Jane Wong

Jane Wong and the cover of her recent collection, HOW TO NOT BE AFRAID OF EVERYTHING. Author photo by Helene Christensen.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with poet Jane Wong about her latest collection How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, published last fall by Alice James Books. Read on to learn more about her experience with using writing as a way to process grief, turning written work into visual art, some of her writing rituals, and more!

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LANTERN REVIEW: In your most recent collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, you maintain a strong focus on your life and experiences as a restaurant baby and mingle food consistently with themes of immigrant family life, generational trauma, and connection to your heritage. When did you first begin to write with your connection to food as an anchor, and how has the relationship between your writing and food changed throughout the years?

JANE WONG: Thank you for this lovely question! Yes! I grew up in a Chinese American takeout restaurant on the Jersey shore. I was surrounded by food and cooking my whole upbringing. I didn’t start writing about food until this second book—mostly because it felt so vulnerable to write about my family’s history with starvation, hunger, and (in my generation) gluttony. I had wanted to write letters to my missing ancestors, impacted by the Great Leap Forward, for over fifteen years and finally had the courage to do so. Though I was tasked to do lots of prep at the restaurant (my favorite being cutting wonton wrappers into strips for the fryer!), my mom always shooed me away from learning to cook—knowing how hard the restaurant life was. I didn’t really learn to cook Toisanese food until the pandemic—a time in which I desperately needed comfort, as we all did/do. I had such a hard time writing or reading in those early days of the pandemic; I’d make tons of soup and think, This soup is a poem!

LR: I was honored earlier this year to have attended an undergraduate Q&A session with you at the University of Pittsburgh. During the session, you mentioned that you’ve been writing since you were a child—for almost as long as you can remember. How have you consistently stayed motivated to pursue your passion?

JW: Oh gosh, thank you, Pranaya! That was such a great visit! Yes, I’ve always wanted to be a writer—which felt like such a risky profession for a first-generation child of immigrants! The public library was across the street from the restaurant (shoutout to the Monmouth County Public Library!), and my mom would drop me off there for hours. I ended up working as a page [at the library] all throughout high school too. I’d read all these books and so badly wanted to see myself reflected in them. (I rarely was.) I’d even write alternative endings to stories and slip them into books. I don’t know if it’s motivation [that drives my writing], but rather, just part of my soul. I try my best not to feel guilty about not writing (especially during the pandemic). I just know that, when I do write, I tend to feel better—emotionally, physically. It almost feels like there’s something inside me that so badly wants to blossom out. It’s vibrational—that creative energy. If it comes out as a ceramic bowl or a bowl of soup, I’m fine with that too. I guess I’m also attracted to what the written word can do—I want to keep jostling language and I want to surprise myself. I am also so grateful for my Asian American literary lineage and feel compelled to write to make our voices heard!

LR: Recently, you transformed your words into visual art in your exhibit NOURISH in Richmond, BC. Have you always envisioned your poetry taking physical form in some way, or was this entirely new territory? How did that creative process look—and how did the collaborative nature of it compare to writing alone?

JW: Yes! That was such a wonderful show, and I loved sharing space with [artist duo] Mizzonk, who was also a part of the exhibit. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to do a show at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle that I opened myself up to interdisciplinary art and installation work, though maybe I’ve always dreamt of making poems physically tangible. I love that a poem gets to have multiple lives—translating and retranslating it in so many ways and mediums. And thank you for speaking to the collaborative aspect of visual art too! I absolutely adored—at RAG and at the Frye—working closely with curators, installation experts, staff, etc. Honestly, it felt like magic to be able to have a vision and talk about what could be done to achieve it materially! It was also quite experimental. We’d try something out, then alter it, then try something totally different, etc. Lots of laughs, lots of excitement.

LR: How has your creative process transformed as you’ve gained experience in the writing world? Do you have any writing rituals that you’ve used since you first started, or do you prefer working with ones you’ve created for yourself more recently?

JW: I love writing rituals. I tend to write via a large document I have on my computer (culled from notebooks/my notes app, etc.) called “The Compost Pile.” Have it be an image or a quote that inspired me, I have to start from this gathering space. I usually take 5–10 lines from that compost file and place them on a blank page. Then I write through them, with whatever is on my mind/in my heart. Some of those lines disappear, some of them transform. But they are imbued with what I am curious about. I love throwing those lines back into the compost pile too, so that images start to constellate across poems. I also eat lots of snacks when writing. I love seaweed. Chips. Salty things, mostly! I read before writing. I like to write dressed up. Like I’m on a date with myself.

LR: You experiment with punctuation and white space a lot in How to Not Be Afraid of Everything. This stands in contrast to your approach in your previous collection, Overpour. Could you talk a little bit more about experimenting with using space as a medium of communication? Have you found that it transforms the way you begin to put an idea onto paper?

JW: Yes! Love this question—and I’m humbled by your words since I really did want to push myself in this new collection formally (and continue to push myself in future writing). In thinking about all the themes in How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (rage, tenderness, matrilineal lineage, labor, hunger, intergenerational trauma and joy, the feminist body, etc.), I knew I had to take some risks that could speak to fragmentation, nonlinearity, strangeness. For instance, for “The Long Labors,” I really wanted that poem to feel like a dense block of tofu on the page. I wanted to feel the weight, the intensity, the exhaustion of that poem. Because labor is real. Because I come from that labor; I feel that labor in my body. And while that poem exists in that form on the page, I also wanted to translate it via performance to give it a more felt life. I cut words from the poem via rice paper and made my mom’s dumpling recipe and “cooked” my poem. I used to fold dumplings at the restaurant (muscle memory), and it felt so good to tie writing with food in this way.

LR: You write about your family and their struggles in How to Not Be Afraid of Everything. Could you talk about the process of integrating their stories with your work? Did you talk to your family specifically for this project before putting the poems down on paper as a draft?

JW: Thank you for this tender question! I like to say that I did some deep listening, like under the earth, with the worms kind of listening. I did not interview my family; I could never do that. Their history with the Great Leap Forward is a painful one, and I couldn’t possibly ask my grandparents to talk about it; I respect their silence. I did, however, listen whenever my grandfather or grandmother spoke about food and what they did/didn’t have. I listened to my mother casually say that she loves eggs because she used to get one on her birthday, if she was lucky. I wanted to be honest about my struggle writing about their stories—that, in many ways, I couldn’t possibly know, I couldn’t possibly understand.

LR: Immigrant families tend to carry a different type of grief and trauma. As the daughter of an Asian immigrant household myself, I’ve found that writing about the histories I cannot experience has allowed me to better process that grief, as well as connect to my heritage with a new outlook, but it’s still difficult. Did writing about your family and their struggles allow you to do the same, and do you have any advice for second-generation writers who are trying to write into generational trauma?

JW: Yes, yes, thank you for sharing, Pranaya. It did help (and still is [helping me]) process grief in a new way. It allowed me to confront that which scares me (my family’s history with hunger, the terror of toxic men) with surprising moments of rage and resilience . . . and ultimately love. Writing to my lost family members felt meditative to me. Like I was lighting an altar space of communication. “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly” came out of me spiritually. When my ghosts answered my letters, I felt a deep sense of calm and joy. I think the advice I would have would be to listen closely, to be tender to yourself and to your ghosts. And to admit and be okay with not being able to fully understand that grief or that history. But that, in trying to write about it, there is light.

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Jane Wong is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, the US Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, and others. Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University.

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November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

An Asian American Poetry Companion: Books to Light Your Way into Winter (Late Fall 2021)

An Asian American Poetry Companion: November 2021. Collage of the following book covers (clockwise from top left): BOOK OF THE OTHER by Truong Tran, PILGRIM BELL by Kaveh Akbar, HOW TO NOT BE AFRAID OF EVERYTHING by Jane Wong, FOCAL POINT by Jenny Qi, COME CLEAN by Joshua Nguyen, LATITUDE by Natasha Rao, FIRE IS NOT A COUNTRY by Cynthia Dewi Oka, GENGHIS CHAN ON DRUMS by John Yau — New and Notable Books by Asian American Poets for Late Fall 2021

As the season deepens into late fall, it’s hard to believe that 2021 is already nearly over. And while the year has brought its fair share of struggle and heartache to the Asian American community, there have been so many things to celebrate (especially in the field of arts and letters), as well. Cathy Park Hong’s selection as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year, Don Mee Choi receiving the MacArthur, Hoa Nguyen’s and Jackie Wang’s being announced as finalists for the National Book Award—Asian American poets are making waves and doing big, impactful things. This year on the blog alone, we’ve featured 34 new books by Asian American poets—and our coverage hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface. Today, we’re sharing our final set of book recommendations for 2021. We hope these eight titles will be a source of solidarity, hope, and light for you in the season to come.

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FEATURED PICKS:

Truong Tran, book of the other (Kaya Press, November 2021)

A timely meditation on the stakes of anti-Asian racism, Truong Tran’s latest book follows the story of the 2016 racial discrimination lawsuit the celebrated poet and artist filed against San Francisco State University. Mixing poetry with other genres, book of the other traces Tran’s experience of being silenced as an immigrant, refugee, and queer man, and argues back against the notion that anti-Asian racism is a victimless crime. Writes Douglas Kearney of the collection: “This book is necessary—terribly so. Yesterday, today, and for the foreseeable future.” This is one book that anyone invested in Asian American arts and letters—especially those who have spent time in academia—will want to read.

Jane Wong, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, October 2021)

Two-time LR contributor Jane Wong has just released her second collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, and we couldn’t be more excited. Wong’s haunting poetry is wise, resonant, and brave, and it’s impossible to turn away from its gaze; as a writer, she possesses the gift of being able to milk startling light from rock. How Not to Be Afraid of Everything taps into the poet’s family history, touching on both the suffering inflicted by the Great Leap Forward and the struggle of immigration to America. Aimee Nezhukumatathil calls the collection “a spellbinding knockout,” and it’s been getting lots of attention of late, including Wong’s recent appearance on NPR’s Morning Edition. How to Not Be Afraid of Everything is at the very top of our to-read list for the season, and we hope you’ll consider checking it out, as well.

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MORE NEW & NOTEWORTHY TITLES:

Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf, August 2021)

Joshua Nguyen, Come Clean (U of Wisconsin Press, October 2021)

Cynthia Dewi Oka, Fire Is Not a Country (TriQuarterly, November 2021)

Jenny Qi, Focal Point (Steel Toe, October 2021)

Natasha Rao, Latitude (Copper Canyon, September 2021)

John Yau, Genghis Chan on Drums (Omnidawn, October 2021)

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What new Asian American poetry titles have you been enjoying as you look ahead toward the end of the year? We’d love to hear from you! Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@LanternReview).

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January 24, 2014January 25, 2014

Editors’ Corner: Books We’re Looking Forward to in 2014 (Part 1)

It’s the first month of the new year, and so much news about exciting new books has come across our desk of late that we thought we’d put together a couple of roundup posts in order to put some of the titles that we’re most looking forward to reading in the coming year on your radar. In today’s post (part 1), I’ll be discussing six recently published titles (five full-length books and one chapbook) that have made top priority on my to-read list for 2014. Part 2 (which will follow next week) will focus on forthcoming books that are due out in 2014.

Note: the books discussed below appear alphabetically by author; the order in which they’re listed does not reflect any sort of ranking or order of preference. (We’re equally excited about all of them!)

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The Arbitrary Sign by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (Red Wheelbarrow, 2013)

Desmond Kon is a two-time contributor to LR (his work appears in both issue 1 and issue 5), and both times that we’ve published him, Mia and I had a really hard time choosing just two of the poems he’d sent in each batch. Desmond’s work interests itself in philosophy, visual art, pop culture, and the sounds and textures of language: he is interested in dadaism and in other forms of the avant-garde, and has a unique gift for finding the music in both “high” language (such as academic jargon) and “low” forms of speech—slang, text speak, gossip column patter. The genius of his poems lies in their polyglot nature—the way that he mixes contrasting modes of speech and weaves easily in and out of a variety of languages. His pieces work because there is a delightfully haphazard quality to their approach, a lightness that plays against both the weight of the poems’ scale and subject matter and the deliberate care with which the poet has gathered, built up, and sculpted their many intricate layers of texture and pattern. Desmond, a highly prolific writer, has published multiple chapbooks (both in the US and in his home city-state of Singapore) and has a long list of journal and anthology credits to his name—and for good reason. I’ve no doubt The Arbitrary Sign—a philosophical twist on the form of the classic alphabet book—will be as delightful as the rest of his body of work.

For a sneak peek at The Arbitrary Sign, head on over to Kitaab to read six of the poems that appear in the collection.

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Kala Pani by Monica Mody (1913 Press, 2013)

This is a book I’ve been looking forward to for a long while now. Monica wrote for us as a staff reviewer from 2010 through 2011, and we later had the privilege of getting to publish a poem of hers in issue 4. Her work is deeply invested in myth and parable, and the textures of her writing are rich and sinuously complex—by turns liquid and transparent, and by others, knotty and grotesque. She has an exceptionally keen ear for music and magic, both of which suffuse her work. I had the pleasure of getting to read and workshop portions of Kala Pani back in 2009. It is a hybrid piece (partway between poetry and prose) that takes up the narrative of a group of world travellers who converge around an ancient tree. In it, the poet deftly plies together the fibers of what at first appears to be an allegory-like story, only to tease and unspun these threads mid-strand and remake them again (differently) in the next breath. What I admired most about the manuscript when I saw it in workshop was the way in which the tapestry of the piece’s language shatters and shifts at a moment’s notice—like quicksilver. Monica is a brilliant critical thinker, in addition to being a talented poet, and it shows in the deeply intelligent nature of her writing: though she is keen to investigate notions of trauma, geography, time, race, gender, spirituality, etc., her writing neither preaches endlessly nor holds to an overly simplistic view of the political: rather, she holds questions up to a mirror, testing them on a knife’s edge. She recognizes that the notions of place and identity are inherently fraught with instability, and she both celebrates and problematizes this complexity: the characters of which she writes transform and bleed into one another, metamorphose and cycle back to avatars of themselves, over and over again, in many different ways. It’s been a couple of years since 1913 first announced that it had acquired Kala Pani, and now that the book is finally out, I can’t wait to read the finished product.

Excerpts of Kala Pani can be found at The Volta, the Boston Review, and Lies/Isle.

Continue reading “Editors’ Corner: Books We’re Looking Forward to in 2014 (Part 1)” →

January 28, 2013January 28, 2013

Panax Ginseng: Two From Dancing Girl Press

Panax Ginseng is a bi-monthly column by Henry W. Leung exploring linguistic and geographic borders in Asian American literature, especially those with hybrid genres, forms, vernaculars, and visions. The column title suggests the English language’s congenital borrowings and derives from the Greek panax, meaning “all-heal,” together with the Cantonese jansam, meaning “man-root.” This perhaps troubling image of one’s roots as panacea informs the column’s readings.

Rachelle Cruz’s Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood and Jane Wong’s Dendrochronology

The cover of Rachelle Cruz’s Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood (2012) features a skeletal exhibit of animal skulls and fangs, together with a spread-winged bat cleaved in half at the book’s spine. The back cover is a folded double of the front, which means we never see the bat’s torso or head (is it a bat at all?), only its bony limbs and the webbing between them. Jane Wong’s Dendrochronology (2011) features a floral-wreathed frame; within it, standing against a bright background suggesting a mirror or window, is a wolf turning to regard the viewer. Since these covers already work with mirror images, I’d like to hold these two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press up to one another like mirrors, to see whether a rabbit hole might be found in the reflections’ depths. Consider the titles as well: a “self-portrait” fixes the artist’s gaze on herself, though the resulting image is of course only another depiction or illusion distorted by the medium, a rumor of sorts; and “dendrochronology” refers to those hypnotic concentric rings coded within the trunk of a tree, those layers expanding outward with time which we trace back to examine in cross sections.

In both chapbooks, the poems work within landscapes of violence and preservation. The central figure of Cruz’s Self-Portrait is the mythical Aswang of Filipino folklore, a placeholder for many ghoul/monster archetypes; here, she uses it as an object of savage exoticization, and as a mirror. These lines of verse prefigure the chapbook,

There was a girl who wanted to become an aswang

She didn’t know why aswang

While living in one country

another split her chest open

Continue reading “Panax Ginseng: Two From Dancing Girl Press” →