The Daily Glance
Kaia Sand's Remember to Wave is one of the most distinct books that I've seen lately. It picks up on the Olsonian task of mapping a place through its history and stories, and the place Sand chooses to map is Portland, Oregon. The book is filled with poetry, prose, images, historical texts, and historical signs/photos, and much of it is layered. The experience is almost as much visual as textual. Sand brings in a wide array of topics, from Japanese internment camp notices to Oregon fish advisories to stories of POD containers. My favorite section, "Uptick," gives us a series of small photos each with a poetic caption. Under a picture of the ocean and sunset (or sunrise), we have the following caption.
in the use of the, in the many of the, in the use of the
in the many of the
that circle is showing the behavior of a sun
sun inked out
is night
in the land of the, in the land of the many
by the hand of the few
taking a risk
on the uptick
In a prose section, Sand tells us, " I began to wonder how we might map the thickness of time and its political history. Where were all these graves Lucille [Clifton] urged me to remember? Beneath condominiums?" This mapping of "the thickness" seems to be the ultimate goal of the work, and reading through it is fascinating, especially as a reader who has not been to Portland and thus has this book as his first taste.
Comments