Reviews

A Tinderbox in Three Acts by Cynthia Dewi Oka

djinnofthedamned's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

5.0

jayisreading's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

This poetry collection focuses on the 1965 genocide in Indonesia, which was led by the Indonesian military and backed by the United States. It's a dense collection that asks the reader to realize the damning position that US empire has had globally, but especially in Asia. Oka approaches her poems from different angles, ranging from character interviews, illustrations drawn to music, fictional telegrams, to a disassembling of declassified documents. She invites the reader to sit with grief of this genocide, but also grief of buried voices and histories due to oppression.

I continue to think about what Oka wrote in Act I, which I think captures her call to the reader to take time to reflect while making sense of this collection:

My resistance to narrative clarity has to do with failure to accept coherence as the best thing we have to offer each other. Coherence is linear or circular. It mitigates risk. In the progression of a march, or the loop of a hook, I am safe from the feeling that possesses no trajectory or destination. In this sense, the melody that neither extends nor offers return to a specific point is the enemy and identity of the displaced.

A powerful collection, but definitely a dense one that will take time to mull over.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Genocide, Violence, and Grief

lifeinpoetry's review against another edition

5.0

Excerpts:

On earth, I have mistaken a rock

for a voice. A voice for a listening.

(from "Apologia")

I am

dust or nothing.

(from "Diplomacy")

I am a girl not a razor blade please let me hold more than onions and windows with no one I can see behind them

(from "Window #033)