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rach200406's review against another edition
5.0
This was like no other poetry book I've ever read. Fiercely intellectual and, at the same time, a bit playful. Her unique and thorough way of looking at what it means to be human was so enjoyable to just take it
choirqueer's review against another edition
5.0
I'm reading a lot of trans poetry lately and am really into it, but this one is a whole other dimension of artistry. I read it a couple weeks ago and can't stop thinking about it! I might have to read it again before I return it to the library (not my usual reading behavior; typically I'll read something, return it, wait a while, and THEN reread). I want to soak it up into my SOUL.
jeninmotion's review against another edition
slow-paced
3.0
It's extremely academic in many ways. Like, there's part of me that gets it on that "for a transracial international adoptee, the self is necessarily split in many ways. Why not map that split self onto the cyborg, that illegitimate hybrid?" level but the other part of me is like "I feel like I need to read this with five different works of theory to really get it and I'm not sure I have the ability to put that into reading anymore."
lauren_endnotes's review against another edition
"Our country, a people with a continuous history of over five thousand years, has been left divided since the end of the Korean War, that peninsula-wide trauma that resulted in tens of thousands of children being made available to the West, first to the US..."
From "Exactly Like You" (poem/essay) from the collection UNBEARABLE SPLENDOR by Sun Yung Shin, 2016
▫️A truly innovative and experimental work of poetry, essay, linguistics, dialectics, and speculative work.
Sun Yung Shin blends her own biography as a transnational / transracial adoptee (born in Korea, raised by a white family in the US) into many metaphors and myths - calling up Greek myths of Antigone, Korean creation stories, Russian folk tales, and science fiction / speculative elements like singularity, cyborgs and clones, and the imaginings of what a fetus dreams in the womb.
Fiercely intellectual, intense, varied in tone and theme. Her poems and micro-essays are anchored by the quotes of those before: Victor Hugo, Franz Kafka, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jorge Luis Borges, Carl Jung, and script quotes from modern classic sci-fi films like Blade Runner and Alien.
Was very impressed with this collection, although I didn't comprehend it all - but that's not the aim in reading poetry.
Sun Yung Shin has some earlier collections (also from Coffee House) that I want to check out too...
From "Exactly Like You" (poem/essay) from the collection UNBEARABLE SPLENDOR by Sun Yung Shin, 2016
▫️A truly innovative and experimental work of poetry, essay, linguistics, dialectics, and speculative work.
Sun Yung Shin blends her own biography as a transnational / transracial adoptee (born in Korea, raised by a white family in the US) into many metaphors and myths - calling up Greek myths of Antigone, Korean creation stories, Russian folk tales, and science fiction / speculative elements like singularity, cyborgs and clones, and the imaginings of what a fetus dreams in the womb.
Fiercely intellectual, intense, varied in tone and theme. Her poems and micro-essays are anchored by the quotes of those before: Victor Hugo, Franz Kafka, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jorge Luis Borges, Carl Jung, and script quotes from modern classic sci-fi films like Blade Runner and Alien.
Was very impressed with this collection, although I didn't comprehend it all - but that's not the aim in reading poetry.
Sun Yung Shin has some earlier collections (also from Coffee House) that I want to check out too...
zachwerb's review against another edition
4.0
An intense, complicated book warranting another reading since I sort of grazed through it as opposed to taking it all in. Beautifully written, the style had a grasp on me, the experimental nature of it has me having to step back.
jimmylorunning's review against another edition
3.0
The book deals with personal issues of displacement, adoption, being an orphan, being a foreigner in a series of poetic essays which reference everything from Greek mythology to Blade Runner to Kafka. It reminded me a bit of Anne Carson in method, though the execution fell a little short. It is a brave concept, but I felt like she didn’t take enough leaps. Many times, her metaphors felt strained, as if she needed everything to connect back to her overall theme instead of letting it go wherever it took her. It felt very "project-y". And when she was writing actual lined/fragmented poetry, I did not connect to it at all. I tended to connect to her prose / essay bits a lot more.
greeniezona's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
4.0
I forget exactly why I sought out this book, but I really enjoyed it. The book cover describes this as "poetry as essay," which definitely feels right. Packed with big mythology and references to classics (some of which I had to look up to refresh my memory), with themes of adoption, motherhood, and identity.
I really loved the illustrations (especially the graphs!). I loved the bits on Korean. The most memorable poem in the collection for me was just a tiny fragment of "Autoclonography," -- "you are small again a small i a short thing with a black dot for a face -- we have always wanted a dot for a face -- so much easier to look beautiful every day..."
Ambitious and moving.
I really loved the illustrations (especially the graphs!). I loved the bits on Korean. The most memorable poem in the collection for me was just a tiny fragment of "Autoclonography," -- "you are small again a small i a short thing with a black dot for a face -- we have always wanted a dot for a face -- so much easier to look beautiful every day..."
Ambitious and moving.
meowpompom's review
2.0
We are all time travelers. We travel at the speed of one hour every hour, one year every year.