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What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?
In her stunning debut poetry collection, What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?, Arlene Kim confronts the ways in which language mythologizes memory and, thus, exiles us from our own true histories. Juxtaposing formal choices and dreamlike details, Kim explores the entangled myths that accompany the experience of immigration—the abandoned country known only through stories, the new country into which the immigrant family must wander ever deeper, and the numerous points where these narratives intertwine.
Sharing ground with Randall Jarrell’s later poems, and drawing on a dizzying array of sources—including Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Korean folklore, Turkish proverbs, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Antonin Dvorak’s letters, and the numerous fictions we script across the inscrutabilities of the natural world—Kim reveals how a homesickness for the self is universal. It is this persistent and incurable longing that drives us as we make our way through the dark woods of our lives, following what might or might not be a trail of breadcrumbs, discovering, finally, that “we are the only path.”
Sharing ground with Randall Jarrell’s later poems, and drawing on a dizzying array of sources—including Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Korean folklore, Turkish proverbs, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Antonin Dvorak’s letters, and the numerous fictions we script across the inscrutabilities of the natural world—Kim reveals how a homesickness for the self is universal. It is this persistent and incurable longing that drives us as we make our way through the dark woods of our lives, following what might or might not be a trail of breadcrumbs, discovering, finally, that “we are the only path.”
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2011
4 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Arlene Kim
1 book5 followersArlene Kim received an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota, where she received the 2006 Gesell Award for Poetry, judged by Major Jackson, the 2007 Marcella DeBourg Fellowship for Writing, and the 2007 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize for Poetry. Kim resides in Seattle, Washington. What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?, for which she received an American Book Award, is her first collection of poems.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
September 3, 2011
these poems keep thrumming in my whole body, and yes, in my ears indeed.
in deed in down in dawn in drape in mane
read WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR EARS in your sea-bed or mossy embankment, indeed.
in deed in down in dawn in drape in mane
read WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR EARS in your sea-bed or mossy embankment, indeed.
July 6, 2016
There are a couple killer poems in here. But over all, the poems didn't get me. Or i didn't get them.
January 19, 2013
As seen in Gently Read Literature, January 2012
http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/
The Woods of Culture:
Arlene Kim’s What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes? invites readers to travel the journey of emigration, through the beauty and confusion that one experiences as they leave their native homeland in order to create a “home” in a new place. One can experience through Kim’s work, a hybrid of past and present, a mix of memory and imagination, and can feel the flickering hint of a possible future in a new place.
Echoes is the self, the ghost of the self, a symbol of a familial lineage. It’s the balance of the old and the new, the in between, the sweetness of nostalgia and the uncertainty of the future. Within this complex subject matter, Kim brings through these poems the dichotomy of forced participation and the willingness to embrace the new.
But an indirect question is asked throughout: How does one fit in with a new culture, with different conventions, customs, attitude, and language—without relinquishing their personal identity? And then further begs the question: What is identity? Is it a prescribed set of cultural norms? Is it a genetic formula? Does it spring forth from the personality? How does language shape this identity? And what happens when one relocates to another geographic location or country? Certainly the body does not cease to exist—meaning that identity is not just the rudimentary DNA, nor the geographic region from which one originates.
The implications that Kim draws in this collection are reminiscent of a Saussurean-like identity, steeped in language and psychology as the basis for individual cultural identity within a larger familial or social clan. Throughout the volume she attempts to answer these questions.
In “Translation Plundered” (42)
Everything is plundered, chanced again, comrade, traitor, fence.
Gone, the feathers, plucked and traded; we had to—
with just thin broth for our hunger—they owed us,
but we learned their songs, didn’t we
before every bird disappeared from the woods.
Kim speaks of the woods as the great unknown, the mysterious, the confusing, the deep, dark woods that eat children, like cherries. Readers can conclude the woods are, in fact, the new unknown culture. Everything mentioned here has been sacrificed, the parts of self that must be left behind in favor of a “greater” force—that is culture—and in exchange,
the woods, which has promised to feed us from its babbled breast,
for now.
When one gives up their first, native language as the primary voice and expression of culture and being, the self is, in some ways, also relinquished.
The woods are also a symbol of a thing of fear, a thing so completely unknown that one cannot fathom what might be beyond the next curve of the path into that dense “forest.” At the end of the day, one retreats to their home, the place that many know as a place of solitude, of quiet, a place to rejuvenate, but this forest is what Kim knows as the new “home.” What happens when “home” has become the dark wood, the unknown filled with fear? What happens when this “home,” these woods, are everywhere? What then, when “home” is not only one’s personal abode, but everywhere one looks, foreign, confusing, frightening?
What is the fear that accompanies when there is no time for relaxation or rest, when all focus and energy is spent on adaptation and survival? When does one have time to go inward? Recenter? Recalibrate? Reflect?
Why not instead imagine what it would be like to escape—or rather be dragged off—as in “Tiger Brother” (43) who
prowls now, keeps watch on all
the young from Mother’s line
hunts what he lost, ready to take you
from home, your true fear.
Drag you like meat
to an unknown lair, where
soon you, too, will go
unknown.
Home, you imagine,
goes on forgetting you.
How simple, in some ways, if she could just be
swept off under a warm, coarse coat.
No more family, no more
name. Lost in strange music
This complex and seemingly subversive piece ponders the idea of escapism, the reluctance to relinquish identity, the resentment and resistance to doing so, and what might happen if she were
always about to meet an old woman
who will catch me
in the crook of her wizened arm, croon
foul familiar songs, stitch me
to her belly, boil away
my name, marry me to her
twig broom, her
lonely Tiger-Brother.
Kim’s graceful yet relentless treatment of this difficult topic is superlative. Just as the old woman in “Tiger-Brother” has stitched this narrator to her belly, Kim has stitched together a flawless, lyrical syntax in “Before the Fires” (49), arguably, the strongest piece in this collection. Here she talks of the disintegration of lineage, as family members are left behind by voluntary relocation. She writes:
Don’t speak to us
of wicks and matches.
All is shadowed now,
burned, blackened in the choke of ways.
Mother wouldn’t like it
but I’ll tell you:
All our uncles died in fire.
Their wax bones made our family tree.
What does it mean to leave behind family members when immigrating to another country? The final two lines propose the answer:
Too full our bellies—full of murder
and nothing.
Of what might one’s belly be “full”? What sacrifices must be made as a consequence of this voluntary choice? And what difficult, confusing, or painful complexities exist as a consequence of that choice?
Perhaps readers can find the answer in “The Squirrel” (53), a prose poem working as both a personification and a metaphor for the proverbial “chase” of the nut—a nice play on an American colloquialism that shows a deep understanding of the culture in which Kim has been immersed. At the same time, the tone of this piece has an underlying sarcasm, a dash of resentment, and a blinkingly clear picture of the underbelly of hope in a new land full of “promise”—greed. After which
Paradise became a seditious yard. The shine grew coarse and dirty; the can shouted vulgarities.
Or perhaps the answers may come from the prose poem “The Collecting” (74), the revisiting of memory, the piecing together of what was the experience of emigration:
Bees and rag-winged dragonflies. A frozen mouse, teeth bared like a prize. A crow, butterflied open.
What are these insects and animals? What are these fragments of memory?
It is the history of the forest, she says, of ways we get lost; I would like to say how it all happened; I would like to put it right.
What does it mean to “put it right”? To hang, suspended in a world that is comprised neither of what one has known, nor to what one does not belong?
To speak of this world as vivid, engaging, and picturesque, would only be a disappointing understatement; Echoes will reverberate now and for generations to come. Kim’s command of the English language (as it’s implied English may not be her first language) is exquisite, and her talent for lyricism a rare gem amongst the rough rocks that will surround this volume on book store shelves. What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes is best understood cover to cover, and will hauntingly lead readers into “the woods” of culture and back out again in order to help finally conclude that the individual’s home is truly within the heart.
http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/
The Woods of Culture:
Arlene Kim’s What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes? invites readers to travel the journey of emigration, through the beauty and confusion that one experiences as they leave their native homeland in order to create a “home” in a new place. One can experience through Kim’s work, a hybrid of past and present, a mix of memory and imagination, and can feel the flickering hint of a possible future in a new place.
Echoes is the self, the ghost of the self, a symbol of a familial lineage. It’s the balance of the old and the new, the in between, the sweetness of nostalgia and the uncertainty of the future. Within this complex subject matter, Kim brings through these poems the dichotomy of forced participation and the willingness to embrace the new.
But an indirect question is asked throughout: How does one fit in with a new culture, with different conventions, customs, attitude, and language—without relinquishing their personal identity? And then further begs the question: What is identity? Is it a prescribed set of cultural norms? Is it a genetic formula? Does it spring forth from the personality? How does language shape this identity? And what happens when one relocates to another geographic location or country? Certainly the body does not cease to exist—meaning that identity is not just the rudimentary DNA, nor the geographic region from which one originates.
The implications that Kim draws in this collection are reminiscent of a Saussurean-like identity, steeped in language and psychology as the basis for individual cultural identity within a larger familial or social clan. Throughout the volume she attempts to answer these questions.
In “Translation Plundered” (42)
Everything is plundered, chanced again, comrade, traitor, fence.
Gone, the feathers, plucked and traded; we had to—
with just thin broth for our hunger—they owed us,
but we learned their songs, didn’t we
before every bird disappeared from the woods.
Kim speaks of the woods as the great unknown, the mysterious, the confusing, the deep, dark woods that eat children, like cherries. Readers can conclude the woods are, in fact, the new unknown culture. Everything mentioned here has been sacrificed, the parts of self that must be left behind in favor of a “greater” force—that is culture—and in exchange,
the woods, which has promised to feed us from its babbled breast,
for now.
When one gives up their first, native language as the primary voice and expression of culture and being, the self is, in some ways, also relinquished.
The woods are also a symbol of a thing of fear, a thing so completely unknown that one cannot fathom what might be beyond the next curve of the path into that dense “forest.” At the end of the day, one retreats to their home, the place that many know as a place of solitude, of quiet, a place to rejuvenate, but this forest is what Kim knows as the new “home.” What happens when “home” has become the dark wood, the unknown filled with fear? What happens when this “home,” these woods, are everywhere? What then, when “home” is not only one’s personal abode, but everywhere one looks, foreign, confusing, frightening?
What is the fear that accompanies when there is no time for relaxation or rest, when all focus and energy is spent on adaptation and survival? When does one have time to go inward? Recenter? Recalibrate? Reflect?
Why not instead imagine what it would be like to escape—or rather be dragged off—as in “Tiger Brother” (43) who
prowls now, keeps watch on all
the young from Mother’s line
hunts what he lost, ready to take you
from home, your true fear.
Drag you like meat
to an unknown lair, where
soon you, too, will go
unknown.
Home, you imagine,
goes on forgetting you.
How simple, in some ways, if she could just be
swept off under a warm, coarse coat.
No more family, no more
name. Lost in strange music
This complex and seemingly subversive piece ponders the idea of escapism, the reluctance to relinquish identity, the resentment and resistance to doing so, and what might happen if she were
always about to meet an old woman
who will catch me
in the crook of her wizened arm, croon
foul familiar songs, stitch me
to her belly, boil away
my name, marry me to her
twig broom, her
lonely Tiger-Brother.
Kim’s graceful yet relentless treatment of this difficult topic is superlative. Just as the old woman in “Tiger-Brother” has stitched this narrator to her belly, Kim has stitched together a flawless, lyrical syntax in “Before the Fires” (49), arguably, the strongest piece in this collection. Here she talks of the disintegration of lineage, as family members are left behind by voluntary relocation. She writes:
Don’t speak to us
of wicks and matches.
All is shadowed now,
burned, blackened in the choke of ways.
Mother wouldn’t like it
but I’ll tell you:
All our uncles died in fire.
Their wax bones made our family tree.
What does it mean to leave behind family members when immigrating to another country? The final two lines propose the answer:
Too full our bellies—full of murder
and nothing.
Of what might one’s belly be “full”? What sacrifices must be made as a consequence of this voluntary choice? And what difficult, confusing, or painful complexities exist as a consequence of that choice?
Perhaps readers can find the answer in “The Squirrel” (53), a prose poem working as both a personification and a metaphor for the proverbial “chase” of the nut—a nice play on an American colloquialism that shows a deep understanding of the culture in which Kim has been immersed. At the same time, the tone of this piece has an underlying sarcasm, a dash of resentment, and a blinkingly clear picture of the underbelly of hope in a new land full of “promise”—greed. After which
Paradise became a seditious yard. The shine grew coarse and dirty; the can shouted vulgarities.
Or perhaps the answers may come from the prose poem “The Collecting” (74), the revisiting of memory, the piecing together of what was the experience of emigration:
Bees and rag-winged dragonflies. A frozen mouse, teeth bared like a prize. A crow, butterflied open.
What are these insects and animals? What are these fragments of memory?
It is the history of the forest, she says, of ways we get lost; I would like to say how it all happened; I would like to put it right.
What does it mean to “put it right”? To hang, suspended in a world that is comprised neither of what one has known, nor to what one does not belong?
To speak of this world as vivid, engaging, and picturesque, would only be a disappointing understatement; Echoes will reverberate now and for generations to come. Kim’s command of the English language (as it’s implied English may not be her first language) is exquisite, and her talent for lyricism a rare gem amongst the rough rocks that will surround this volume on book store shelves. What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes is best understood cover to cover, and will hauntingly lead readers into “the woods” of culture and back out again in order to help finally conclude that the individual’s home is truly within the heart.
January 3, 2022
yah slayed
“& when we lie down again, I curl around this rib, my own, to poke at the strings of myself, hear how I’ve been.”
on a more technical note than simply “yah slayed” this collection blew me out of the water. Arlene Kim’s use of language is unlike anything i’ve ever seen. Every single line is brand new, refreshing, and show stopping. Definitely will be rereading soon.
“Against what do we rush? The loneliness, dumb despair.”
“& when we lie down again, I curl around this rib, my own, to poke at the strings of myself, hear how I’ve been.”
on a more technical note than simply “yah slayed” this collection blew me out of the water. Arlene Kim’s use of language is unlike anything i’ve ever seen. Every single line is brand new, refreshing, and show stopping. Definitely will be rereading soon.
“Against what do we rush? The loneliness, dumb despair.”
July 10, 2012
What Have You Done to Our Ears is the debut collection of poetry by first generation American poet Arlene Kim. Mixing fairy tales and Korean folk tales, Kim creates a surreal world where family and tradition collide with temptation and danger. This is a place where stolen sisters return "missing some part" and mothers and fathers disappear into the "dark milk" woods leaving orphaned children. "Season of the Frog", a personal favorite, is based on a Korean folk tale of a disobedient frog rebelling against his mother's wishes. Echoes of the conflict facing children of immigrant families, struggling to maintain cultural traditions in the face of assimilation, rise through in lines such as:
There is more world
and it is too sweet
to deny. Though I tried
to listen. I could not
follow your song
Be sure to read the notes portion of the collection as it explains many of the Korean folk tales and symbolism that may otherwise pass unnoticed. If you are interested in more poetry with inventive takes of fairy tales, check out The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales.
There is more world
and it is too sweet
to deny. Though I tried
to listen. I could not
follow your song
Be sure to read the notes portion of the collection as it explains many of the Korean folk tales and symbolism that may otherwise pass unnoticed. If you are interested in more poetry with inventive takes of fairy tales, check out The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales.
May 5, 2023
One of the best poetry books I’ve read. ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
Arlene Kim blends her many inspirations - particularly but not singularly influenced by her Korean roots - in her first poetry collection. The repetitions of apples, pears, axes, threads felt like clues from her childhood or perhaps her life beyond her verses.
Her word choices, exquisite. Her rhythm & alliteration, they echo in the beat. In a beat.
Some favorite lines:
Roots
trace many stories;
branches cradle secrets; birds,
on other hand,
don’t trust
birds.
***
Soon evening smells of apples, the world
rises like bread. We wait to harvest
what grows, but we are not the only ones.
***
I know the danger, but there are times
when you must cut yourself
out from the belly of home.
Claim the blade. The cutting
is not to be feared as much
as the sowing.
***
And the MOST Asian line I can relate to: You are the oldest, so be good.
***
I am not sure if Arlene is the eldest, but she is BEYOND good. READ HER POEMS!!!
Arlene Kim blends her many inspirations - particularly but not singularly influenced by her Korean roots - in her first poetry collection. The repetitions of apples, pears, axes, threads felt like clues from her childhood or perhaps her life beyond her verses.
Her word choices, exquisite. Her rhythm & alliteration, they echo in the beat. In a beat.
Some favorite lines:
Roots
trace many stories;
branches cradle secrets; birds,
on other hand,
don’t trust
birds.
***
Soon evening smells of apples, the world
rises like bread. We wait to harvest
what grows, but we are not the only ones.
***
I know the danger, but there are times
when you must cut yourself
out from the belly of home.
Claim the blade. The cutting
is not to be feared as much
as the sowing.
***
And the MOST Asian line I can relate to: You are the oldest, so be good.
***
I am not sure if Arlene is the eldest, but she is BEYOND good. READ HER POEMS!!!
April 30, 2020
After reading the first part of the collection, I immediately looked to see if Arlene Kim has any other books out (sadly, i did not find any). Kim collects visuals from the folklore and myth of her family and her broader background. The threads weave into a dark, haunting, and utterly enchanting volume. The work serves as a reminder that these stories, the fables and instructive fictions, are hardly outside of the realm of our own reality. The act of memory and shared experience create new worlds.
April 9, 2024
I wanted to like this collection more than I did. I think it's just a result of not understanding all the sources Kim was alluding to in her poems (though the notes at the end of the collection helped a little). She has such a distinct, dreamlike style, though, that I want to revisit this collection in the future to see if I can better understand it on a second read.
August 28, 2022
"How histories
repeat in a maze,
how they
won't let go
our hands,
so afraid
we'll lose direction
or start
a new track,
running from our first stories
like rabbits"
I love pretentious poetry books.
repeat in a maze,
how they
won't let go
our hands,
so afraid
we'll lose direction
or start
a new track,
running from our first stories
like rabbits"
I love pretentious poetry books.
May 29, 2023
I read this as an e-book, which likely took away the form as the author intended. This will stay with me and is a collection of poems I would like to return to in physical form and unravel. Thank you, dear author!
August 5, 2024
Beautiful, descriptive poems ✨️
I just didn't understand some of them tbh.
I just didn't understand some of them tbh.
April 8, 2012
“In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for ourselves,” writes Muriel Rukeyser in the introduction to her book, The Life of Poetry, words fitting for the narrative of Arlene Kim’s first book of poems, What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? In Kim’s book, a family leaves their home country for another country, unaccustomed to the new customs and language, but trying to find a place for themselves. Sometimes the persona is categorized in the first person, sometimes in the first person plural, but it is evident throughout that whoever is speaking feels lost and strange.
Read the rest of the review at The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2011/09/your-not...
Read the rest of the review at The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2011/09/your-not...
October 15, 2011
http://therumpus.net/2011/09/your-not...
I felt as if I were in the deep, dark woods, on a loamy earth-path, with night all around me, but not frightened--!, just absorbing the richness of this world, the thickness of the words, and savored.
I felt as if I were in the deep, dark woods, on a loamy earth-path, with night all around me, but not frightened--!, just absorbing the richness of this world, the thickness of the words, and savored.
March 17, 2013
I fell for Arlene Kim's poetry at the Hugo House Lit Series, but this book cemented that adoration. For thoughts on how Kim uses line breaks, imagery, and layout, check out my book review.
October 6, 2011
Arlene is a wonderful writer, and her craft shines in this first volume of poetry. I look forward to reading more of her work.
May 27, 2012
Familiar words, strange feelings.
This book inspires me to write verse. And string words, phrases. And I also enjoyed the acknowledgements and notes(!)
Read
March 13, 2013American Book Award
August 21, 2015
Fables bite back in Arlene Kim's stunning collection.
April 18, 2017
A mixed lot..a few were quite good.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews