Travelogue
I faint
in flight and fall and
fall. I come to
a hill above the city.
There’s Rome, at a nice
remove—seems like
itself from here. Each day,
retrieve
book from shelf. Out
the windows, in the pages
figures of
a wall that might
as well be mine. Aureliana
suits me; each gate
opening
new ways
not to arrive.
All roads lead to, and away from, Rome in these poems, as Kang writes around and through an empire and a series of moments across the stories of ancient history, specifically the founding of Rome. There’s a coyness to her directness and vice versa, writing specific and slant through figures and stories known and less-known, getting to the heart of each character and encounter across a wonderfully delicate lyric. As the poem “In a Roman Story” offers, writing Rhea Silvia: “That wasn’t / what she wanted: she asked // to face the wall / to more fully be // -come the gate he sought. / Oh Mars, you mistook me // for someone / I briefly was.” There is such thoughtful and incredible pacing across these poems, one reminiscent, slightly, of Canadian poets George Bowering or D.G. Jones, the slow hush and halt and play and propulsion of Canadian postmodernism an accidental (I can only presume) patter across her lines. “I have to tell you: I made two. / Didn’t know how else // to make it.” begins the poem “Roman Couplets,” “I put them / a double return a // -part on the page, let them / fall through sky // side by side. I oppose / these maneuvers, but the truth // is there were two— / one left me, one loved me, // they were the same.”
There’s something magnificent in the way Kang articulates elements of Roman history, offering elements on how to hold to a single thought, or reach across decades, attempting to articulate the ways in which one might live, might be; each poem a small moment, each of which together collect and pool into accumulations of large movements. Through Kang, poems and books are composed out of moments, providing a powerful precision of thought, story and word. She writes a book-length narrative, one that provides both an expansiveness and a pointed specificness, held in space, in amber. As the poem “Mars Falls / Honeymoon Suite” begins:
Mars at the podium, Mars in his gmail, Mars on the platform, Mars in the elevator, Mars in the park, Mars in his office, Mars on the steps, Mars at the door, Mars in his kitchen, Mars in his room, Mars on the couch, Mars on the floor, Mars at the river, Mars on the phone, Mars at work, Mars at a conference, Mars in a paper, Mars by text message, Mars in a daydream, Mars in midtown, Mars across town, Mars in the heat, Mars at his desk, Mars at his books, Mars on the train, Mars in the mind, Mars in a memory, Mars in the summer, in May, as in May I?, but it was too soon, we were wrong, it was spring.
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