Cynthia Dewi Oka is a stunning poet. There really isn't much to else to say. Her poems in this collection have such a dense pulse--rich and electric and sort of moving in and out of the hum. I just enjoyed the way sound moved throughout, with such an enrapturing charge. It was easy for me to fall into. I don't know, I'm easily swooned by Brown women who write--I love where Brown women go, how they shape and reconfigure the colonial landscape of english, redesigning and undoing something in how they explore and examine and focus. It is a declaration of existence that I love to witness. I love to see it. And Oka delivers such an enticing sound wave. I

This is a rich and powerful collection of poetry, scripts, and prose poems chronicling the passages of life and time, and grappling with pain, displacement, and anger. The writing is lush, sometimes going a little too far beyond metaphor and threatening to lose the track altogether, but broadly readable and engaging. The author's various genres encourage readers to think about the meaning of form and genre, and how it shapes our reading.

Cynthia Dewi Oka's third collection is my first glimpse to her body of work. Highlighted recently in Potery Foundation's VS podcast, the opening poem, <i>Meditation on the Worth of Anything</i> left a mark. It talks about migration, about our relationship with our parents (our mothers in particular), on how they took their stories and blend in their second homes, and maybe they really don't need to understand what Juliana Margulies says in <i>The Good Wife</i>.

The diaspora themes, namely families, intergenerational trauma, systemic violence that is translated on toxic masculinity, the chorus and dissonances of our different stories, and maybe just watching Sonequa Martin-Green acting on Star Trek, act as the thread that Cynthia Dewi Oka uses to bind this really powerful collection.

Particular highlights for me are these verses on <i>Because I miss her</i>
<blockquote>
She
would have wanted me to ask
nicely, to volunteer
my life for an idea of my life, because
she knows what it is to send
a voice out over the water and have
nothing come back.
</blockquote>

The speculative elements of Interlude, Phantasm: A Body Politic, which packs so much in just so little space.

And of course, the extremely tactful, humorous and a testament of how our mothers absorbed their second language in <i>Ode on Her Last Day of Work</i>.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and the Northwestern University Press for providing me an eARC of this book</i>

Cynthia Dewi Oka's third poetry collection showcases her ability to envelope multiple poetic styles and formats while still maintaining a cohesive voice throughout the works. Fire Is Not a Country exhibits Oka's command of language and vocabulary, using vividly descriptive language throughout; "a child sat, arms folded at a desk painted the color of seafoam; the wood had not been sanded, often, it splintered the sides of her hands as she lashed slippery knots of alphabet around the pack of dogs leaping from her throat." However, the language is also a detriment to the overall collection; in many poems, Oka gets bogged down in the details and descriptions and the overall theme of the poem gets lost in the individual lines. Fire tells Oka's deeply personal story of her upbringing and trauma, and is clearly a cathartic experience for her. For the reader, not so much.

At surface level, this collection of poetry is interesting and engaging; Cynthia Dewi Oka has powerful lines and makes attention grabbing choices when it comes to format and language. The difficulty with the collection is that by favoring these elements, not enough attention was paid to clarity for the reader. There are few moments in the collection when the text speaks a specific insight or frames a clear event. By making so much of the emotional resonances of obscure experiences, the reader lacks anchors to ground their understanding and internalize the broader messages and stories intended by the author. Though there is a “right” reader for this type of poetry, it must be a reader that can accept appreciation without comprehension.

In “Meditation on the Worth of Anything”, Oka writes, “cherry blossoms burst their green corsets”. This is a beautiful example of a unique description, but it is part of a metaphoric description of a man whose role in the poem is unclear. This is a poem centered on the speaker’s mother, but prefaced by a creepy man’s call for worthiness. While the connection may be clear in the writer’s mind, it doesn’t come across to the reader and the expertly crafted lines such as “my/mother refused to howl like the dog they called her” and “she is//smiling. Mouth small. Red, like a liar’s word”, though interesting on their own, do not carry the work. Similarly, “Elegy With a White Shirt” refers to a time years before when “people carried rain inside//them like small hammers”. It seems to refer to battle with references to “line[s]”, “combat” and “readiness to die”, but the piece unfolds and makes the reader question whether this is clashing forces or metaphoric memories battling across the page. If it is the former, the context and event are unclear. If the latter, the core of said memories is obfuscated.

Teachable Moments:
This collection and its contents are difficult to use for a literature course because, like with many older pieces, authorial intent isn’t clear. Many students are hesitant to work with poetry because they feel as though meaning is obscured by technique and poems such as these would confirm that assumption. However, working at a higher level of analysis and with a group of students who aren’t impeded by reaching hard conclusions may benefit from examinations of the impressions established with these pieces. Honors or AP classrooms could identify the tone and the mood of the pieces with attention to Oka’s fine tuned craft.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers; all opinions are my own.

Wow! Cynthia Dewi Oka is truly an incredible poet. It has been so long since I've found a collection of poetry that I found the writing to be so precise and beautiful. I don't even know how to describe what I just read. Even visually on the page, the poems are arranged in different formats, so as you flip through the book it looks dynamic and interesting. There are a few photographs throughout the book and even the descriptions of the photographs at the end are beautiful.

I'm in a book club that exclusively reads AAPI books, and I can't wait to share this book with that group! Thank you so much to netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.