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Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-57131-440-6
Pages: 96
Publish Date: 2011
Genre: poetry
What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?
BY Arlene Kim
In this stunning debut, Arlene Kim confronts the ways in which language mythologizes memory and, thus, exiles us from our own true histories. Juxtaposing formal choices and dreamlike details, the poems in What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? explore the entangled myths that accompany the experience of immigration—the abandoned country known only through stories, the new country into which the immigrant family must wander ever deeper, and the numerous points where these narratives intertwine.
A luminous collection from a new voice in contemporary American poetry.
Sharing ground with Randall Jarrell’s later poems, and drawing on a dizzying array of sources—including Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Korean folklore, Turkish proverbs, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, and Antonin Dvorak’s letters—Kim reveals how a homesickness for the self is universal and brings the reader toward discovering, finally, that perhaps “we are the only path.”
"Using fairy tale archetypes like axes and keys, and diverse cultural references—from the Romanovs and code ciphers to Korean birth rituals—Kim recasts the experience of family immigration in language that manages to be both lush and restrained. This is a book to savor, give your friends, and let echo in your ears for a long time to come."
—Katrina Vandenberg, author of Atlas"In this young century, American writing has rapidly changed and the impact of this book proves Arlene Kim is a part of this exciting transformation. Her poetry and prose challenge the concept of genre as they redefine the role of the imagination. Her courage and visionary dances realign the poetic process as Arlene takes the personal and moves it into dimensions where the words of the seer become the sounds of compassion."
—Ray Gonzalez, author of Muy Macho"Arlene Kim's stunning debut explores a wilderness where the self orphans and twins. 'In that dark, we take shape,' she tells us. Tracing origins both real and fabled, the poet writes of the dislocation of home in all its complexity yet equally assumes the protean work of braiding a broken lineage. With lush and exact language, surprising form and slippery syntax, these innovative poems do not recover what is lost, rather they body forward and remake with intoxicating urgency 'the next world for something like singing.' Kim's wholly original voice and attentive consciousness reinvent the page and call us back to the family of things."
—Jennifer K. Sweeney, author of How to Live on Bread and Music
