The Daily Glance (The Kollectiv Series)
Michelle Naka Pierce's Symptom of Color is an amazing chapbook, and I didn't expect it to be. I don't mean that because of the poet--this is the first time that I've read her work. I mean that when I picked up the chapbook and flipped the pages, it just looked like another prose poem collection, but to classify it as that would be a gross understatement. When I began reading, I quickly realized that the prose poems continue across two pages. While my first reaction was to read down one page as is typical, I realized that the lines did not fit exactly and that they continue across the border of the page. In addition, I quickly realized that the poems continue (literally the lines break) on subsequent pages. She's crossing both the border of the page in the book but of continuing pages. You might not think crossing pages is that significant, but with prose poems of five lines, it seems quite different. In addition, as the narrative builds in the collection, she adds another short poem below the main ones on the page. The short poems continue in the same way, and it causes the conundrum of how to read one narrative at the top of the page while not letting the one at the bottom slip by.
Beyond the actual experience of reading is the content, which is mostly about being on a border. In one sense, it's about being on the border of a painting and what that means in the context of a museum. In a more personal level, it's about being on a cultural border and trying to negotiate that. For her, it's about being from a Japanese family in the U.S. She brings up how people in the U.S. see her and also how she is seen in Japan ("you will always be a gaijin"). The way she structures the reading experience in this book mirrors the content. It makes us, readers who might or might not be negotiating borders in a similar way, negotiate the borders of the book, a cultural experiment, to figure out how to make sense of it.
This chapbook definitely makes me want to check out the rest of her published work.
Michelle Naka Pierce's Symptom of Color is an amazing chapbook, and I didn't expect it to be. I don't mean that because of the poet--this is the first time that I've read her work. I mean that when I picked up the chapbook and flipped the pages, it just looked like another prose poem collection, but to classify it as that would be a gross understatement. When I began reading, I quickly realized that the prose poems continue across two pages. While my first reaction was to read down one page as is typical, I realized that the lines did not fit exactly and that they continue across the border of the page. In addition, I quickly realized that the poems continue (literally the lines break) on subsequent pages. She's crossing both the border of the page in the book but of continuing pages. You might not think crossing pages is that significant, but with prose poems of five lines, it seems quite different. In addition, as the narrative builds in the collection, she adds another short poem below the main ones on the page. The short poems continue in the same way, and it causes the conundrum of how to read one narrative at the top of the page while not letting the one at the bottom slip by.
Beyond the actual experience of reading is the content, which is mostly about being on a border. In one sense, it's about being on the border of a painting and what that means in the context of a museum. In a more personal level, it's about being on a cultural border and trying to negotiate that. For her, it's about being from a Japanese family in the U.S. She brings up how people in the U.S. see her and also how she is seen in Japan ("you will always be a gaijin"). The way she structures the reading experience in this book mirrors the content. It makes us, readers who might or might not be negotiating borders in a similar way, negotiate the borders of the book, a cultural experiment, to figure out how to make sense of it.
This chapbook definitely makes me want to check out the rest of her published work.
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