The Selkie

by Morgan Võ

The Selkie, Morgan Võ’s fascinating and highly original debut, is organized into three linked sections, animated by jokes, confusion, existential horror, and banality, often revealing the gaps in understanding that tangle this string of vignettes. In an outdoor market, we meet an unlikely hero in The Monger, buying and selling fish from his stall while the poems around him touch on topics of racial capitalism, cultural ties to animals and food, dislocation, diaspora, and the impacts of the nuclear family. Also included are The Monger’s own written documents that propose a series of year-long performance pieces, each seemingly created to test and explore his specific individuality among a community of displaced histories. Võ investigates how the shadows of larger global issues link with our intimate and daily interactions, and The Selkie introduces an entirely unique voice within the landscape of contemporary American poetry.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2024

About the author

Morgan Võ is a poet and librarian, and a current member of the Poetry Project Newsletter editorial collective. His poems have most recently appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and Wyrm. Originally from coastal Virginia, he lives now in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Selkie will be his first full-length book of poems.

Reviews

[Zoe]

Maya can this be the theme of our bathroom

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Look into a Succulent's Finger
Vitality is a set of cards that must be played with cards of sickness. Like a dying trout held flat against the window, one eye on the yard in late spring, its late invasive rain. One eye on the wrist of the hand holding its neck and chest, on the wrist a corsage of succulents and frail white flowers. Each succulent makes a regular kaleidoscope of its engorged rubbery leaves, the perfect distribution of its fingers in circular time. Each flower a crumpled kleenex. Each card a business card. A look into a succulent's finger distributes a card, that falls to the ground lightly like kleenex. Beams that break through pans of sky bounce off the floor and pile up on the cards. Vitality cards are all red on the front, sickness cards all blue. But even though they're bunched up in crumples, they've landed so only the backs can be seen, and the backs are all white. One eye sees deck chairs flushed under rain. One eye delights on the complex of crumples. Each lost respiration is felt with a flower placed in a gill. (69)

[vernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Selkie is divided into three books, each varying degrees of good. The first book follows the fish monger, his stand, and his life. This was the worst book, in my opinion; there were parts that I could sense some sort of motif within, but it just felt so scattershot. There are references to Tibetan separatism, Anthony Bourdain and Vietnam, the fish monger's wife attempting to become more like a fish, and Vō doesn't really do anything with any of them. The second book is prose, and is, in parts, better, but also suffers from the same problem, it's verbose when it doesn't need to be. The piece of prose titled 'The Selkie', the final piece in the book, is great, it's far more direct in its treatment of its themes while also not spelling it out for the reader. The final book is a return to poetry, and it's also great, I would read a full poetry book just comprised of writing like that. Sadly, it's also only five poems. Overall, I think I liked Vō's style when it became less focused on just being stylistic and actually being poetry, but I didn't gain anything from reading this.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poet and librarian Morgan Võ’s debut collection is made up of three sections of extended sequences. Blending humor, surrealism, and sparse yet dense vignettes, Võ looks closely at our main character (a fish monger), where a tunnel vision leads to a more worldwide and zoomed out perspective. Correspondences next to prose poems next to lined sequences. Looking local while going global. I had the pleasure of seeing these poems in their earlier forms taking shape during an online writing workshop led by Vi Khi Nao (shout-out The Poetry Project).

[Aracelly Mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book. It is fun, weird, and there's fish. The fish monger and the conversation with Anthony Bourdain...

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

hey
if you do find a winner
take a picture
mail it to someone who cares