{"id":16403,"date":"2012-12-29T12:33:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T20:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=16403"},"modified":"2012-12-29T12:33:25","modified_gmt":"2012-12-29T20:33:25","slug":"review-of-nomad-of-salt-and-hard-water-by-cynthia-dewi-oka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=16403","title":{"rendered":"Review of “Nomad of Salt and Hard Water,” by Cynthia Dewi Oka"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I think it was Eavan Boland who wrote the essay I kept thinking about while reading Cynthia Dewi Oka\u2019s first book of poetry, Nomad of Salt and Hard Water<\/a>, <\/em>published this year by Dinah Press<\/a>. I don\u2019t remember the essay\u2019s title, or even when I read it, but it was about how the proliferation of first-book poetry contests has changed the nature of what it means for a poet to publish a first book, and for a press to make a commitment to that poet. Boland\u2019s point, if I remember it correctly\u2014if not, I guess I\u2019ve now made it mine\u2014was that the manuscripts which win those contests aren\u2019t really first books anymore. Rather, because they have been so thoroughly revised as their authors resubmit them year after year after year, they are more like second or even third books, with all the roughness and spontaneity, the experiments and inevitable failures that characterize any first attempt at anything pretty much polished out of them.<\/p>\n

Boland saw this as a loss, as do I, which made reading Oka\u2019s book a refreshing pleasure. I could not help but feel as I read her work that knowing she has said what she has to say and that whomever she has said it to has listened, and listened well, means a lot more to her than any praise a reader might have for how technically accomplished a poet she is, and she is technically accomplished. Nonetheless, I\u2019ll start by talking about some of the missteps in her book. I don\u2019t, for example, understand why \u201cadvice for the young nomad\u201d is even a poem:<\/p>\n

all you need
\nfor the journey
\ntoothpaste, sandals, grit<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As well, the pop psychology of \u201cain\u2019t got no degree in psychology\u201d is plain and simple unworthy of the depth and breadth of emotional and psychological insight Oka is capable of:<\/p>\n

but honey, I damn well know
\nshame can be the loveliest smile
\nin a room: it can save you
\nfrom living.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These whole poems aside, Oka more commonly stumbles because she tries to push a good thing too far. Here are the first six lines from \u201cto know beauty,\u201d the last three of which are completely unnecessary:<\/p>\n

Each year on your birthday, I see stars gather
\nthey robes like queens at the seams of a black sea,
\nwhispering to each other in a vernacular of light,
\nwithout sound, but with all the understanding
\nof the leaf, which blooms, sings and withers
\naccording to the needs of each season.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not just that \u201cwhispering\u2026without sound\u201d is a contradiction (or paradox, if you prefer) that does not contribute anything to the poem as a whole; it\u2019s more that those last three lines actually narrow, because they try to explain, the dark, lovely and powerful metaphor in the first three. Indeed, metaphors are the building blocks of Oka\u2019s poems, where the beauty and power of her work resides. She stacks them, juxtaposes them, explores them. In \u201csoothsayer,\u201d she describes resilience as something that \u201cbegins in the thighs, threads up\/\/through the armpits and crouches under the jaws\/like a smuggled jewel,\u201d and in part three of \u201croads to a dance,\u201d here she is describing a musician, \u201che was a back pocket\/brew of molten lines\/churned low under hat\/& jazz sentinel eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is violence in Oka\u2019s poems\u2014colonial, sexual, economic\u2014and one of the joys of reading her work, if I can call it that, is watching her transform that violence into a meaning out of which beauty can grow. This is from \u201cgentrify this!\u201d Notice how she packs each line with a rhythm that moves the language towards the bigger thing it begins to name:<\/p>\n

blister hands break night carve bold
\nout of frostbit bone grafting
\nlife bigger than circumference of
\nbeat cops property value city policy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In \u201cprologue: exile\/return\/arrival,\u201d she turns her metaphors to a different kind of political end, describing the violence wrought by the Dutch when they \u201cdrop[ped] anchor to take\/Bali\u2019s last standing kingdoms:\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dutch walk their bayonets
\ninto the silence of the jugular and small intestine,
\nthrough the cups of the collarbone.
\nTheir cuticles acquire bright ribbons of human tissue,
\ntheir beards rain with the dying spit of adolescent boys.<\/p>\n

By the time they reach the palace, they are no longer men.
\nUnable to die, their shovels hit the ground
\nscraping enamel and brain matter for the first runway
\nto deliver industry, ammunition, anthropologists,
\nand hurl little girls with hooves stapled to their ribs
\nlike so many stones at the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most intimate violence Oka writes about, however, is rape. I don\u2019t want to make the mistake of attributing to her biography the specific details of any given poem, so I will say, simply, that \u201cvulture\u201d is visceral and terrifying to read and that \u201camulet,\u201d which she dedicates to \u201csister survivors,\u201d exhibits all the strengths and weaknesses of this book as a whole, pushing its incantatory, almost bardic form into plainspoken obviousness\u2014\u201cI write to learn with you\/how to accept love on your own\/terms and in your own time\u201d\u2014while at the same time giving such precise form to what it means to survive rape that it took my breath away:<\/p>\n

there are no promises
\nafter rape we choose
\nthe distance and measure of our lives<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For me, the emotional center of Nomad of Salt and Hard Water<\/em> is \u201cwhen you turn eighteen,\u201d addressed presumably to her son. There is in this poem nothing superfluous, no pontificating, no plainspoken obviousness, just the seamless weaving together of all the meaning she has been trying to make throughout the book as she asks her son to<\/p>\n

imagine a boy who became a father
\nbefore he was a man who raised himself
\ninto a snare his own back twice opened
\nthen closed in the structure of a dragon
\nimagine his silence like a thin gold chain
\npassed hand to hand in the acid almost
\nvomit of a ship\u2019s human hull imagine
\nfinding asylum in blocks of brick mouths
\nfists the pendulum of dead light on a string
\nas many pseudonyms as curbs to ring into
\nthe local precinct\u2019s crosshairs
\nimagine the blood cabling his forearms
\nin one frequency: Young and Dangerous\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cNomad of Salt and Hard Water\u201d<\/em> is a book worth reading for its strengths as well as its weaknesses, which reveal a poet for whom poetry is a calling, not a profession. I am glad to know that a poet like Cynthia Dewi Oka is writing and that Dinah Press has made the commitment to publish writers like her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it was Eavan Boland who wrote the essay I kept thinking about while reading Cynthia Dewi Oka\u2019s first book of poetry, Nomad of Salt and Hard Water, published this year by Dinah Press. I don\u2019t remember the essay\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16403"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16406,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16403\/revisions\/16406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}