IN MEDEAS RES

 

by

 

Karen An-hwei Lee

 

Sarabande Books

 

Page 73

 

$20.95 Cloth ISBN 1-932511-06-7

$13.95 Paper ISBN 1-932511-07-05

 

The back cover describes Karen An-hwei Lee s first book-length poem as a form of eccentric dictionary. Well, maybe, although the poetry is startling different. Heather McHugh, who selected the manuscript for the Morton Prize for Poetry, describes it as an etude on blindness and enlightenment and that Its taxonomic daring is vintage Stein. That s also possible, but the language poetry often defies comprehension. What s interesting is how the book works through the letters of the alphabet, defining several words, often unusual ones, for each letter. Here s Apricot and its poetic description:

One morning, the day room is too much.

Too much glare from light.

She opens a letter from her mother.

 

The image tells you at least two stories, and the one you imagine may be quite different from the possibility. Then there s Comparison.

A paper bird unopened until marriage.

In the nature of epigrams from the Greek Anthology, these brief poems fit together image and language normally unassociated with one another, highly ambiguous and often difficult of meaning, as if a string through a labyrinthine passage we follow, not necessarily with speed, but perhaps a page or two taken in at once, then returning again over time. There is religion here, too:

WATER TRANSLATION

 

Each day, she went to the well. As she filled her pail, she

listened closely to learn the language. With every drop of

water, she picked up a new word. Ruach was one. Breath

of life. Terata, the reactions of eyewitnesses to miracles.

 

As McHugh says in the introduction, That attention is a form of prayer is a mystic s intuition. The focus by Karen An-hwei Lee on both image and language is intense.

#