Cathy Park Hong's Engine Empire (Norton, 2012), second selection

So much of the experience of this book lies in the whole over the parts, such that I feel a little awkward posting passages. Take it from me that the book's strength can't be surmised from the piecemeal.



I'm a titbit, a dollop easily bored,
a trolloping doer, I loll and gag,
fired from the tear gas factory, the denture factory,
now the heart-ticker factory.

from "The Engineer of Vertical Frontiers"

the sitting room is quiet, sprayed

with air freshener the flavor of aged

             card catalogue

*

           a sea full

of whales huge as ocean liners

singing the call-note of our

relieved tears.

from "Ready-Made"

When your former employer let you go,

they said, you are now free to pursue what you want to pursue.

So here you are.

end of "Who's Who"

I hail an aerocab,

turn up my personalized surround sound

track: wistful to anthemic

to voice

              recognition,

a song strains after a longed

sweet spot of identification.

beginning of "The Quattrocento"

I see too much

yet go, go into the unknown,

             smell the salt, rancid

scent of water, seagull,

blades of grass and listen.

from "Get Away from It All"

The sheer sapphire cliffstone towered so high,

the whole ocean seemed frozen inside it.

Under its shellacked panes of ice were marblings of color

I'd long forgotten: tangerine, topaz,

canary and rose.

Like fluorescing cuttlefish,

the colors pulsed, swirled and bloomed

into contracting rings. The ice breathed.

*

One day, I decided to steal some.

I pocketed one grain.

The snow glowed bluely in my hovel.

My little lamp.

Then one night I don't know why I swallowed it.

And this is what I saw.

from "Fable of the Last Untouched Town"

At the date of posting, you can buy Engine Empire for 25% off at Foyle's for a mere £7.49 (it's worth it, it's worth it!).

Cathy Park Hong's Engine Empire (Norton, 2012), first selection

I heard Cathy Park Hong read in Seattle during the AWP conference, and in my journal I wrote exclamation marks next to her name. After the event, I told her how much I enjoyed her work, but as her books weren't on sale at the event, I kept her name in my mind for later reference. 

Last Wednesday, I traveled to London to my first meeting since being elected to NAWE's (the National Association of Writers in Education) Higher Education Committee, and as it ended early and was near the British Museum, I found myself in the wonderful London Review Bookshop's poetry section, and there it was--Hong's latest book, Engine Empire. The first section is a narrative largely in ballads, titled "Ballad of Our Jim"; here are some favourite passages.




Day's gone immortal.

The bleached ruin of light lasts and lasts, no night
to repair our minds, no white clip moon to give us rest,
Only pitiless noon where our sleep-starved consciousness 
patters faintly behind our squinted eyelids. 

from "Ballad of Tombstone Omaha"

We stop speaking. Our lips curl back so we're just teeth.

Our Jim sings as if all his body's reed.

No thought flickers behind his linseed eyes.

from "Ballad Beyond the Forts"

We shuck our boots near an alkali pond

where no fish breathes its poison, only white alien worms

float like dander from a sunken

corpse turned angel.

from "Ballad of Arrival with Hatajo of Mules"

We scream: Do it, boy! Shoot!

He aims cold, slays them all, 

exciting us no end.

He says: I'm done finishing your games. 

end of "Ballad of the Rube Parade

with Their Quiver of Spades"

Jim sings: I'm tiring, I'm tiring.

His grim instinct wilting.

Dispiriting Jim, climbing hill's hilt,

drifting Jim, sighing in this lilting,

sinking light.

end of "Ballad in I"

He rides into a shadowed plain,

where a storm of grasshoppers

hoving wings to wind,

black the sky thick as larrup. 

beginning of "The Song of Katydids"

You too can buy Engine Empire from the LRB Bookshop for £10.99 by following this link.