From From by Monica Yuon

From From is a book I’ll read again. There are layers here that need to be peeled back and studied. As a whole, this book examines human connection, race, and loss. From From is divided into five sections, each with different poetic techniques and different image bases, using nature, myths, art, history, folklore to examine current and historical views of Asian Americans. They are metaphors assembled by the reader, and the speaker trusts the reader to do the work. The poems work often through association and leaps, and through examining language itself. The poems leap forward then circle back. The first section involves classical Asian mythological figures. The second is a reflection on education in modern US. The third, WWII era comics and propaganda. The forth section uses stories and folklore about magpies. And the fifth is a meditation in parts on the passive voice. This section could be an essay, but I think it does the work of poetry, using metaphor, discover through language, focus on a subject instead of a narrative, and weaving of different image pools. This is an important and marvelous book. Buy here.

From “Study of Two Figures (Midas / Marigold)”

Everything he touches turns yellow.

We are meant to understand this as a form of death.

Death is a wish to improve one’s surroundings.

Which is to say to be dissatisfied with one’s surroundings is a form of death.

To be dissatisfied with one’s child, to with to improve one’s child, is to wish its death.

Her death.

The dead child is unchanging, therefore beautiful.

Which is why we say that death is the father of beauty. . .

From “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Magpie”

V.

According to English superstition, if you encounter a single magpie, you should immediately spit three times over your shoulder to ward off bad luck.

But what kind of person holds at the ready such a mouthful of spit?

A store of liquid hunger that, by leaving the mouth, is instantly transmuted into contempt?

VI.

In another Korean story, the hero finally reaches the abandoned temple whose great bronze bell had tolled three times in the night to save his life.

Under the bell, the bloodied bodies of three magpies whose sacrifice the hero only at that moment deduces.

Again, the bodies of the selfless magpies had been put to another use for which they were ill-suited—in this case, a hammer, as before they had made a bridge.

Is that why the magpies hav been teaching themselves to use tools, to keep from being the means to the end of yet another story?

From “Details of the Rice Chest”

. . . Like a magnifying glass, the stone courtyard focuses the gaze on the rice chest. The gaze increases in intensity and heat.

July temperatures in Seoul average 84 degrees Fahrenheit, with average humidity of 78 percent.

I have been to Seoul in July, I have worn hanbok on a summer day, but only once.

I have never seen a rice chest.

The rice chest is a functional object and stands in contrast to the highly decorative architecture of the palace courtyard. Its plainness renders it inscrutable, impenetrable.

Because of its oversize lid, the rice chest appears top-heavy, charged with kinetic potential. On its four small feet it seems to be crouching on its haunches, to be hunkering down.

“Hunker down” is a Scottish term that refers to squatting on the balls of one’s feet, low to the ground but in readiness. It implies an apprehensive stasis, tense with the potential for sudden movement, poised to flee or to attack.

I have hunkered down, but only once.

Midway through the film, the rice chest is bound with thick rope, with a knotted webbing of four or five thicknesses of coarse, fibrous rope. The quantity of rope exceeds the function of the rope to such an extent that the rope binding seems decorative, symbolic.

I have been bound with rope, but only once.

There is something almost comic about such an excess of rope to bind a single imprisoned and dying man, the way there is something almost comic about a circle of guns pointed at a single, unarmed man. I say almost comic rather than actually comic because, although these images provoke the same pent-up tension as suppressed laughter, I do not know who would find either of these images funny.

After it is bound, the lid of the rice chest is heaped with grass . . .