Mia You, Rouse the Ruse and the Rush

 

The blood has turned
                        darker and thicker,
            brown smeared across
white cloth, as if
            a palette knife was taken
                        to this womb, and here
            are the scales of the
raspberry shaped
            insect, ground
                         into poppyseed
            oil and earth,
and beneath that,
           dead-color,
                        doodverf,
           of the ground that held
you until the
           rustle and the
                       rush insisted
           you could not
stay.

I’m very pleased to be able to go through the latest title by Mia You, her Rouse the Ruse and the Rush (Berkeley CA: Nion Editions, 2023), a book-length lyric with accompanying art by Fi Jae Lee, produced in a sleek and graceful hardcover letterpress edition of one hundred and fifty copies. As it states in You’s bio, she was “born in Seoul, Korea, grew up in Northern California; and currently lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands,” and is the author of the poetry collection I, Too, Dislike It (1913 Press) and the chapbook Objective Practice (Achiote Press) [see her ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here]. Rouse the Ruse and the Rush is a book-length lyric writing translation and ekphrasis through the body, blending separate threads into a weave of between-ness, one state into and across another. “The title Rouse the Ruse and the Rush plays on the name Ruysch,” You offers, to begin her introduction to the collection, “which belonged to the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ painter of floral still lifes Rachel Ruysch (1665-1750) and her father, Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), an anatomist and botanist well-known for his innovative embalming techniques. With Rachel’s help, Frederik created a series of dioramas incorporating human, mostly fetal, body parts and decorative elements such as lace ribbons, pearls, and coral that were collected as art. Almost a thousand of these dioramas are still on display in St. Petersburg, where they went after being purchased in 1713 by Peter the Great.” You’s extended lyrics writes around and through the two Ruysch’s and their works, writing on painting and life, stillness and autonomy. “I’m nearly alive / as many years as Vermeer,” she writes, near the end of her book-length poem, “and as a woman / that means / I’m even older // and I’ve never known / a scenario in which / the opposition / is truly between // choice and life [.]” Further on in her introduction, she adds:

Fi Jae’s articulation of the multilayered self resonates with my own attempt to map the cosmology of the reproductive (in this case, female) body in Rouse the Ruse and the Rush. Further, her drawings visualize to me the ways in which we can push beyond the limited vocabulary employed when defining “personhood” and the status of “human being,” and when seeing them as absolute values. In 2022, history has shown us, and the future warns us, that these categorization are inadequate for determining who or what has the right to life and who or what has the right to choose what can happen to their bodies. Bodily autonomy is the modern world’s greatest mythology. For those of us nonetheless determined to see greater reproductive justice in this world, we need new terms for regarding the bodies we inhabit and the varying bodies that inhabit us.

Nion Editions is a small press run out of Berkeley by Jane Gregory, Lyn Hejinian and Claire Marie Stancek, producing some stunning titles, with a simultaneous title by Ed Roberson, and even one forthcoming by Lisa Robertson. “definition is a still-life,” You writes, mid-way through the poem, “a well-crafted ruse, / so what can translation be, / but noise that comes / to rest in song?”

At the bottom of the aquarium
is a pearl and a grain of sand.

The pearl says, “Grain of sand,
why must you always write in
such long, unreadable sequences?”

The grain of sand replies, “O Pearl,
you always emerge to surprise
and with such glory,

            but for me, but for me,

I’m so scared

of ever leaving anything
on its own.”