{"id":4206,"date":"2011-08-04T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=4206"},"modified":"2011-08-03T10:53:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T14:53:31","slug":"review-tamiko-beyers-bough-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/04\/review-tamiko-beyers-bough-breaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Tamiko Beyer&#8217;s BOUGH BREAKS"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_4207\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4207\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boughbreaks.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-4207\" src=\"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boughbreaks-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boughbreaks-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boughbreaks-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/boughbreaks.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4207\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">bough breaks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/meritagepress.com\/beyer.htm\"> <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<ul><em><a href=\"http:\/\/meritagepress.com\/beyer.htm\">bough breaks<\/a> <\/em><em>by Tamiko Beyer<\/em> | <em>Meritage Press 2011<\/em> | <em>$12.50<\/em><\/ul>\n<p>The title of Tamiko Beyer\u2019s first chapbook,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/meritagepress.com\/beyer.htm\">bough breaks<\/a>,<\/em> evokes not just the creepy nursery rhyme, but also plant metaphors and motifs running through the poem-sequence. On the very first page there is \u201cdeep moss,\u201d \u201cbloomer,\u201d and the \u201cinstinct\u201d that \u201crises \/ late\u201d from \u201cwhatever field\u201d: whatever it is, this field has conceptual dimensions as well as spatiality. Shortly thereafter, the narrator tells us, \u201cI construct syllabic fields,\u201d suggesting with the simple present tense\u00a0a habit, a pattern, perhaps something involuntary\u2014and in this field, language itself, like foliage, must be attended to \u201clike watering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These language-pastures seem to have once in the past(oral) contained the narrator until this instinct, to be a mother, escapes\u2014pretty much like a protuberance\u2014and causes a being-body to leak through. Queer desire is already a transgression, &#8220;chaotic.&#8221; By challenging the narrative that queer sexualities are non-reproductive, the maternal instinct turns the queer body excessive over and above its already-excess.<\/p>\n<p><em>bough breaks<\/em> seeks to interrogate this protuberance, this leaking, and its limits. It is fuelled by yearning: \u201cwill there be \/ between us a darling?\u201d Yearning pushes through the body of the poem in the form of white space. Forms are invented to strike off authorized definitions of conception (biological as well as artistic), to prefigure the politics of a queer couple raising a child so as\u00a0to question gender (\u201cwe would \u2026. \u00a0open <em>mother<\/em> to repetitions\u201d), to consider how options for child-getting are often embedded in contexts of violence and capitalistic greed (and is there really a choice), to destabilize both the \u201cnatural\u201d and the \u201cnot natural\u201d in &#8220;queer&#8221; and &#8220;motherhood&#8221; (and sneaky iterations of everything in between), to circulate even more questions around adoption and embryo adoption (check out that play with \u201cplay\u201d and \u201cpay\u201d on page 24!).<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Repeatedly, the sly, fluted precision of the poems (\u201cwe drift through rooms of thefted \/ antiquity\u201d) is voiced over by something smeary and glittery (reminding me very much of the Aswang&#8217;s uprising in <a href=\"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/review-barbara-jane-reyes-diwata\/\"><em>Diwata<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>and if by invisibility they mean they do not see us<br \/>\nour bows and gnashing teeth<br \/>\nour prom dress feather boa heels<br \/>\nhair glittered gray the fisting and holler<br \/>\nfishnets fishnets breasts breasts breasts<br \/>\nour voices pitched forward into reclamation<br \/>\nthe blood in our mouths sweet slick<br \/>\nlike our ready-to-take-you between our legs\u2014<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nour diy manicures all silvery and chipped<br \/>\nour shouts so lovely so lovely all that licking<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sections of the sequence travel back in time, in memory and in stories, to Beyer&#8217;s growing-up years in Japan. A child \u201ctucked into the sled\u201d gapes \u201cat the sky\u2019s star-dense orchestra\u201d and a kind of loopy, tender narrative suggests itself. Is it\u00a0the orchestra that transmits (a cunning build-up!) the next nonsense-like, charming section with re-ordered words from lullabies?\u2014it begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>spice went birds<br \/>\ngonna back silver sugar<br \/>\nthe crown was pie and ashes and me<\/p>\n<p>Mama&#8217;s three silver shells<br \/>\nbirds light if tails<br \/>\nI&#8217;m a very nimble buy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another skid in time, and there\u2019s a collective fall off the bike (give you a \u201cchin gash shin gash\u201d\u2014clever tongue-twister chant!) and the narrative picks its scabs only to stick them to the pavement.<\/p>\n<p>All through, the text maintains community and solidarity with \u201cbodies and histories as ragged \/ as ours but not as privileged.\u201d A certain perspective on the plant motifs, we learn, can purpose the divine: &#8220;<em>that&#8217;s god:<\/em> green pulsing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it is the plantal divine being supplicated in the last section:\u00a0\u201cWill you come to excavate the pile I have crawled under and cannot \/ bear to leave?\u201d Or is this \u201cyou\u201d future child, or possible futures, or possible future-selves, or self-in-the-present, or memory, or this poem-sequence, or language, or poetry\u2014or is the intervention to be on the part of readers, collectivities? By opening itself up to possibilities of &#8220;rescue&#8221; through any or all of these apertures, the sequence submits to a vision where the past, present, and future come together to refashion the cultural logics it is questioning.\u00a0Curiously, it ends with this instruction: &#8220;If I am quiet, I might know what the body means without words.&#8221; This &#8220;quiet&#8221; does not seem to be a vacuum; it seems to be filled with information, leaks, for the narrator, and\u2014I would say\u2014for Beyer&#8217;s intentional communities (queer,\u00a0Asian American, urban, transnational). This goes back to the idea of surplus which, through its transgression of boundaries, has the potential\u00a0to bring about change. Or is it a death-wish, a refusal on the part of &#8220;I&#8221; to be rescued and extricated from the heap, this inside not-outside? Or, as Iris mused in an email to me\u00a0this morning: &#8220;Is this a prophetic vision? \u00a0Or a contemporary trance\/hallucination in which traumas of loss and longing and be-longing might be worked out? \u00a0Or something else entirely?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>bough breaks by Tamiko Beyer | Meritage Press 2011 | $12.50 The title of Tamiko Beyer\u2019s first chapbook,\u00a0bough breaks, evokes not just the creepy nursery rhyme, but also plant metaphors and motifs running through the poem-sequence. On the very first page there is \u201cdeep moss,\u201d \u201cbloomer,\u201d and the \u201cinstinct\u201d that \u201crises \/ late\u201d from \u201cwhatever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[677,678,332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4263,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}