num_pages: 83
description: The poems here are little and fragile. They are old women dying alone in drafty back bedrooms. If you enter, you have to be quiet-they have important things to say, but you'll need to lean in to hear them. Every word Wong May writes in this, her first collection of poems, is important because she writes as if she has few to spare, as if she's going to die before she gets to the end each of poem. In "Point of View", I imagine just that-longer lines like deeper breaths getting shorter (shallower), two-line stanzas like heart beats getting weaker until the last stanza is erratic: These are transparencies between time &amp; space, Pork-rinds which when held against light Yield to sight pores thru which a pig Once perspired. A pig is on fire! Killing itself at 365 m.p.h., and There will be no Death, I am (I am afraid) FascinatedIn this poem, we are given a pig. As promised in the title, this is a book of animals. This is a book where each poem uses an animal to chew (pigs, dogs, cows, tigers, etc.) and peck (chickens, black birds, etc.) at our sensibilities, where an animal manifests itself as our own sense of fear, where an animal, in a sense, becomes a mascot for our own deaths. Wong May is dying here, figuratively of course, and at her figurative bedside are animals. Some of the few poems where animals are not in attendance are the poems directly written to her mother. Perhaps the animal manifestation in these cases must remain implied. The figurative death in "Dear Mama" is in her own abandonment of her mother in China (presumably to come to the States): By the same token I leave you, I leave myself (with you). The going forth henceforth a grafted green fit to live or die. By the same token I leave you living, dying, or unfit for both, waiting for my return: Your big eyes, short arms that I inherited, failed.In a poem not addressed to her mother, where animals manifest themselves as signifiers of death, an old lady is looking for birthday cards at Kresge, "Bending over/the birthday cards (like/a camel on 3 legs) the old lady//asks me to pick her one/her mouth is chicken-blood fresh". The birthday cards are reminders of our impending fate, and by comparing the old lady to a camel, Wong May manages to convert one our most durable, life-giving animals into one about to collapse into its unavoidable doom. The blood of chickens, one of our most fragile animals, is shed unendingly, but because the blood is fresh, it is full of life and offers a sharp juxtaposition to the images that come just before it.These poems are not Haiku. But, like Haiku, there is so much weight in what is not being said. There is a wordlessness here that is so profound-Wong May is very careful with the words she doesn't include. BGBOA is an experiment perhaps in Haiku that has unraveled itself, has become completely undisciplined, but retains that core minimalism from when it was once tightly wound. Please, Wong May, break my heart at the end of "Apology" with syllables achingly close in count to that of Haiku: You owe me just this: A bundle of dead birds. I won't want it.Please Wong May, in "The American Best Seller", scare the bejeezus from me with your wordlessness: "This is me your murderer calling from Florida at 3:15 sorry to wake you up I'm describing that scene I need your help." Let me think about it I say, and I walk barefoot to the bathroom &amp; wash my faceIn their unraveling from the traditional form, a perfect lack of balance has been found. The bulk of these poems make me incredibly uneasy-particularly because of all that is missing. But also because Wong May sheds a good amount of blood and she has a dirty mouth-it is all really very becoming. She doesn't close the doors that she opens, and worse yet, she opens the doors that are already open, and closes the doors that are already closed. Perhaps these are David Ignatow poems that she has written, that have been pecked at by black birds.But unlike Ignatow, I think, Wong May is much more concerned with where her words are on the page. Her decisions about lineation are essential to the success of the poem. I am in awe with this, partly because my own poems have no dependence on lineation. My words take hold in their own context, not necessarily through positioning. But I've no doubt experimented (maybe to no avail). Wong May's are somehow more beautiful to look at; her poems are to be appreciated with the eyes perhaps-perhaps poems to be read all at once, not from top to bottom. I see the spaces as much as I see the actual words. It is unclear how these poems don't topple over. As I read "Beer" over again, I realize that I do not read "(out of the house", but allow them to float, subconsciously. There is this darkness rising from under the table under The bed I'll give you 3 crumbs if you stop at my breast There it is climbing up my legs. My left arm is numb. Soon the table will be floating (out of the house With us at it Still drinking beerShe allows the darkness to be even more mysterious by shifting our focus to "you" in the second stanza (am I the darkness?). This is where the uneasiness arrives. I am unsure how she feels about me. I am unsure how I feel about her. She makes me question both our roles in this whole mess. At the end of "Ankles": "Leave my ankles//alone you (who have/tossed me on your/knees) said probably//to Death or was it/Death speaking"I've found myself drawn to Wong May's fragile little poems. They deserve more elbow-room in the conversation, and could serve as an appropriate second entry point for any look at Chinese-American poetry, or for that matter, a second entry point for anything that has come out of Iowa 3 or 4 decades ago.--Zachary Schomburg***This I do know about Wong May: She is almost completely undocumented, unphotographed, and unreviewed. She got a BA at the University of Singapore, got her MFA at the University of Iowa in 1968, and wrote three books of poems (Reports [1974] and Superstitions [1978]). In 1978, she curled up into a tiny ball and disappeared.http://www.octopusmagazine.com/Issue0...
title: A Bad Girl's Book of Animals
titlecomplete: A Bad Girl's Book of Animals
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 21
publisher: Harcourt & Brace