{"id":6319,"date":"2013-01-28T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=6319"},"modified":"2013-01-28T12:35:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T17:35:41","slug":"panax-ginseng-two-from-dancing-girl-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/28\/panax-ginseng-two-from-dancing-girl-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Panax Ginseng: Two From Dancing Girl Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panax Ginseng is a bi-monthly column by Henry W. Leung exploring linguistic and geographic borders in Asian American literature, especially those with hybrid genres, forms, vernaculars, and visions. The column title suggests the English language\u2019s congenital borrowings and derives from the Greek <\/em>panax, meaning \u201call-heal,\u201d together with the Cantonese <\/em>jansam, meaning \u201cman-root.\u201d This perhaps troubling image of one\u2019s roots as panacea informs the column\u2019s readings.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rachelle Cruz’s Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood<\/em><\/a> and Jane Wong’s Dendrochronology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The cover of\u00a0Rachelle Cruz\u2019s Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood<\/em> (2012) features a skeletal exhibit of animal skulls and fangs, together with a spread-winged bat cleaved in half at the book\u2019s spine. The back cover is a folded double of the front, which means we never see the bat\u2019s torso or head (is it a bat at all?), only its bony limbs and the webbing between them. Jane Wong\u2019s Dendrochronology<\/em> (2011) features a floral-wreathed frame; within it, standing against a bright background suggesting a mirror or window, is a wolf turning to regard the viewer. Since these covers already work with mirror images, I\u2019d like to hold these two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press up to one another like mirrors, to see whether a rabbit hole might be found in the reflections\u2019 depths. Consider the titles as well: a \u201cself-portrait\u201d fixes the artist\u2019s gaze on herself, though the resulting image is of course only another depiction or illusion distorted by the medium, a rumor of sorts; and \u201cdendrochronology\u201d refers to those hypnotic concentric rings coded within the trunk of a tree, those layers expanding outward with time which we trace back to examine in cross sections.<\/p>\n

In both chapbooks, the poems work within landscapes of violence and preservation. The central figure of Cruz\u2019s Self-Portrait<\/em> is the mythical Aswang of Filipino folklore, a placeholder for many ghoul\/monster archetypes; here, she uses it as an object of savage exoticization, and as a mirror. These lines of verse prefigure the chapbook,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0There was a girl who wanted to become an aswang<\/em><\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t know why aswang<\/em><\/p>\n

While living in one country<\/em><\/p>\n

another split her chest open<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and are preceded by an epigraph from a Margaret Atwood poem:<\/p>\n

They see their own ill will
\nstaring them in the forehead\u2026
\nBefore, I was not a witch.
\nBut now I am one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These forcefully split identifications launch us into the chapbook. Yet, when we land on the opening poem, \u201cFigure A,\u201d we find it to be of formal sterility, a museum placard poem, in which a profile photograph of the Aswang is encased and described as an object for study. Throughout the book are poems in the permutative voices of the wild Aswang, as well as of those seeking to codify and domesticate it as an anthropologist or imperialist might. This diglossia speaks both to the aliveness and the deadness of a wild subject subjected by a formal language.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s Dendrochronology<\/em> begins with \u201cCross Section,<\/span>\u201d which makes a similar play with the language of classification. She begins: \u201cA tree felled and it was recorded as living.\u201d The first verb\u00a0<\/span>here conflates the passive transitive (a tree must typically be<\/em> felled by an external force) with the simple active; Wong\u2019s tree seems not to fall, but to fell itself. Later, she writes: \u201cWhen the cross section was revealed, ants \/ were found hiding in the scars.\u201d This image of vitality bursting out from wounds or perceived death is prominent in the chapbook, and as we come to be guided through the examination of a tree\u2014its diameter, height, lean direction, crown density\/condition, remnant\/trace, and diagnosis\u2014we are exposed to it by a poet who finds vital wildness in the stilted observations of analysis. In \u201cDiagnosis,\u201d for instance, we read:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The scars of fire, flood, and lightning are mechanical, animal
\nThe decay is severe
\nMy arm feels abandoned
\nThe palm of the tree is open
\nThe open is a crater of the overgrown and after<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

These overlaps are marvelous in their implications. From the earlier first line, there may have been some gesture at the old koan, \u201cIf a tree falls and no one hears, does it make a sound,\u201d but these lines mix grammatical referents so thoroughly that the animal, the human, and the dendron all share in their damages. Natural disasters are both animal and<\/em> mechanical; the decay may refer to the scars, to the hosts of the scars, or to the arm, which also refers to the tree with its palm. And in the last line, again, a crater or wound opens to reveal not a cavity or absence but an overgrowth: signs of life in spaces of death.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

More than personifications, these are transformations, which we also see enacted in Cruz\u2019s poems. In Cruz\u2019s \u201cCross-Examination,\u201d the speaker is prompted several times, \u201cState your name<\/em>,\u201d and proceeds, with a forcefulness which calls to mind Diane di Prima\u2019s Loba<\/em>, to name herself by sources of power and magic:<\/span><\/p>\n

Immortal daughter<\/p>\n

Pyramid of plumage.<\/p>\n

Orange bud.<\/p>\n

Proboscis.<\/p>\n

Night loiterer.<\/p>\n

Vampira.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

And so on. In \u201cLitany for Silence,\u201d an incantatory list poem, each line ends, \u201cI swallowed silence.\u201d Many of those lines also include an \u201cand\u201d which sometimes is conjunction and other times is cause-effect: \u201cA book of strangers and I swallowed silences. \/ A man pressed down and I swallowed silence.\u201d The poem itself, of course, is a performative act of speech, a claim of ownership of a subjected past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dendrochronology<\/em>\u2019s second section transforms the violence of the Japanese attack and occupation in Hong Kong in 1941 into muted, natural images. For instance: \u201cThin rifles swing down the street. \u2018Look, a parade,\u2019 the child says, pointing.\u201d Then, after a gap of white space: \u201cKimonos blossom a screaming.\u201d In a passage describing ration lines, allocations, and stagnation, we conclude: \u201cA cut on a finger resembles a gill,\u201d suggesting an amphibious survival in multiple landscapes, a possibility opening out of a wound. Many of the poems in this section divert from unspeakable violence and executions, fixating instead on the painfully small, like \u201cthe ruin of tea steeping.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The third and final section of Wong\u2019s chapbook, set in California, seems to offer a metamorphosis which unites that unspeakable history with its \u201cfainting \/ or faint, Gloss of Once, Before\u201d preservation in the cross-section. In th<\/span>is section, which seems closer to the present day, we find closeness. An earlier image of \u201ca sword held cursive to the throat\u201d echoes and transmutes here to: \u201cLaundry on a line curves, gives.\u201d The ending of the book, in a cool cadence reminiscent of Gwendolyn Brooks, closes on the subjunctive, the hopeful, though it still acknowledges<\/span>\u00a0the past\u2019s darkness: \u201cWe play hide, we play well. We are too good at silence. We lean against each other, mud banks. In wool blankets, we could be children. Great heaps in wolf dark.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-Portrait<\/em> takes us through several metamorphoses as well<\/span>. The contrapuntal form of \u201cSelf-Portrait as Rumor\u201d is arranged in two uneven columns that can be read down or across to reveal the potential beast inside the woman. It ends with the double exhortation: \u201ckeep your children in line\u201d and \u201ckeep your children.\u201d We see a similar gesture in another poem, \u201cThe Mother: Confession I,\u201d in which a child is transformed through various poisons and tonics because, its mother says, \u201cI want to keep you forever.\u201d This perhaps vindicates the vindictive Aswang, who,<\/span> we were told in \u201cFigure A,<\/span>\u201d takes \u201cpleasure in devouring human fetuses.\u201d At the same time, however, in \u201cThe Anthropologist Fantasizes About the Aswang,\u201d to “<\/span>keep“<\/span> means something very different, as we go from accusation:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Monsters unfold
\non my sterile table.
\nThief of seed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

to vengeance: \u201cI want to trap \/ her body of ruin.\u201d And finally to domestication: \u201cTame her, \/ name her mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s that word \u201cruin\u201d again. Here, taming and naming create a productive space which invites us to consider the lines between wanting to keep<\/em>, to keep from<\/em>, and to keep in<\/em>. The final note of the chapbook embraces the wild and vindictive for its possibilities. In the final title poem, \u201cSelf-Portrait as Blood,\u201d the speaker invokes her blood as a genealogical but also mythic heritage, as a river (cf. Langston Hughes reclaiming tradition when he sang, \u201cI\u2019ve known rivers\u201d), as a \u201cmagic of return,\u201d and, finally, as a \u201cwild, wild water.\u201d Water as sustenance, but also as something in constant motion, flowing, refusing to stagnate or be penned in.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I cannot do justice to these chapbooks in such a short space. But the rabbit hole within and between them, I propose, is this: inasmuch as history is a linear narrative, it must resign itself to the straight corners of museum cards and summaries; but trees and Aswang and other wild things can tell their narratives in circles, in ripples, and in cuts which open both inward and outward, onward.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panax Ginseng is a bi-monthly column by Henry W. Leung exploring linguistic and geographic borders in Asian American literature, especially those with hybrid genres, forms, vernaculars, and visions. The column title suggests the English language\u2019s congenital borrowings and derives from the Greek panax, meaning \u201call-heal,\u201d together with the Cantonese jansam, meaning \u201cman-root.\u201d This perhaps troubling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"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":[705],"tags":[934,937,935,366,936],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6319"}],"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\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6319"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6362,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6319\/revisions\/6362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}