{"id":6228,"date":"2012-12-12T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=6228"},"modified":"2012-12-04T19:07:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T00:07:44","slug":"review-nicky-sa-eun-schildkrauts-magnetic-refrain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/12\/review-nicky-sa-eun-schildkrauts-magnetic-refrain\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut’s MAGNETIC REFRAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Magnetic Refrain<\/span><\/a> by Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut | Kaya Press 2013 | $14.95<\/em><\/p>\n

. . . Conjoined at the hip, we could
\nonly pretend to be aligned but really
\nwere so frantic to separate. You tried
\nto saw us in half, after I\u2019d fallen asleep,
\nthen I\u2019d woken to what you\u2019d done,
\nbrilliantly. You\u2019d bandaged the sopping
\nblood at the split bone and medicated me,
\nbut still, I was pleased by our most recent
\nattempt at sovereignty. I could not
\ncomplain for lack of dishonesty.
\nIt has never been that easy, keeping you
\nsecret, when you keep dividing me.<\/p>\n

(from “Dear Other,” series)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
MAGNETIC REFRAIN<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Magnetic Refrain<\/em>, transnational Korean American adoptee Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut speaks through folktales and fox-demons, inflatable dolls and war brides, defectors seeking asylum and mothers separated from their children by adoption and military partition, to explore the magnetism of twinning, t<\/span>he conjunction of self and other, and the continued return to the loss of never knowing.<\/p>\n

Like the poems “The Unfilial Daughter” and “The Filial Son,” or “Venus and the Martian,” many pieces and personas in this collection mirror each other in their adjacency, like twins. The tension becomes a metaphor for the diasporic longing to come together, cross the water, and belong within a family history that straddles endless divisions.<\/p>\n

As an adoptee with two birth dates and two different names, Schildkraut writes of the phantom parallel trajectory of a life that could have been lived, a loss that begins to haunt. Two sets of parents. Mother and other, “multiplying instead of living” (“The Lucky Bastard”). Schildkraut gestures toward a fantasy of joining these two trajectories, a fantasy in which one becomes two becomes one, becomes same.<\/p>\n

Twins, siblings and lovers recur, wanting the m\/other, “[taking] turns becoming invisible” and then “long[ing] to become visible, again” (“Family History”), “pulling her in half” (<\/span>“The Twin She Never Knew”). The “magnetic refrain” of the book contemplates what holds two people together\u2014a child to its family\u2014and<\/span> whether or not these magnetisms cou<\/span>ld be classified as “love.”<\/p>\n

Schildkraut’s collection features many poems in the second person, but the point of view shifts in the final piece, “Vaguely Asian,” where the weight of her explorations via folklore and human\/doll hybrids settles into a more personal narrative. Here, Schildkraut’s sharp voice struggles with the diasporic plight of not knowing, and what it means to be given up “out of love, for strangers in a foreign country” (“Oedipal”). Looking at an old scrapbook, she writes, “The pages for early memories from birth to early childhood, date and time of birth, are all left blank.” Visiting a Korean shaman, she asks herself, “What can she tell me about my other, early life in Korea that hasn’t already been made up out of thin air?”<\/p>\n

“It’s a different kind of loss, to never know,” realizes Schildkraut. Her poems and personas literally and figuratively become inflated by longing. She ends “Vaguely Asian” with the following revelation regarding origin and place: “And even if those origins are obscured, the drive to search still remains like a lantern sending a fractured pattern of shapes against the wall at dusk, half-shadows, half-light.” These poems breathe into the shell of diasporic desire, and allow us to witness the speaker’s first flickering attempts toward anim<\/span>ation and fullness.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Magnetic Refrain will be published by Kaya Press on February 4, 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magnetic Refrain by Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut | Kaya Press 2013 | $14.95 . . . Conjoined at the hip, we could only pretend to be aligned but really were so frantic to separate. You tried to saw us in half, after I\u2019d fallen asleep, then I\u2019d woken to what you\u2019d done, brilliantly. You\u2019d bandaged the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"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":[540,922,923],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228"}],"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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6228"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6249,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228\/revisions\/6249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}