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Nebulous Vertigo
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 9, 2026
Belle Ling’s Nebulous Vertigo is a poetry collection lovingly dedicated to the writer’s parents. The content page begins like a poem in its own right, with quirky and intriguing titles like “This Little Fish” or “Let Your Hair Be Gone.” Other titles collect images of food and color – miso soup, Jesus green, cod, tangerine, tofu, red beans, and dumplings. Ling takes a series of items arranged in curious titles and gives them deeper meaning by building a story around them.
In “Be Quiet in the Miso Soup,” Ling writes this:
If there’s too much, or too little
that makes me know not,
please let me go back
to the centre of it all,
to sit, and to forget,
to sit, and to forget.
They are the last two stanzas of the third poem in the collection, and they serve as a suggestion, admonition, and invitation to the reader. Each poem is a “far province / of many secrets” that the reader should sit in the center of. Certainty of meaning can come and go, be remembered and forgotten, rediscovered and re-enjoyed.
Ling’s musings are not limited to words alone. “Let’s Go Back to Grass Flower Head,” “Miss Wong Says,” and other poems use visual art as well in their storytelling. It introduces another layer of imagery into the latter’s storyline as Miss Wong schools and berates: “It’s not like this!” But the poem’s speaker is more concerned with “A self with a multitude of selves: I’m the one-hundred-written… / a silenced mantra.”
In the next poem, “So, Is that How Light Travels?” the speaker’s conversation with the moon is evanescent, hopeful, and regal.
To whose face you’re talking? the moon asks.
To whom, so brightly, you’re paying tribute? I ask the moon.
The mundane and the mythical, the simplistic and the convoluted, careen into one another in Ling’s thoughtful, assertive, and whimsical collection. In one moment, the reader is firmly planted with both feet on the practical ground. In the next, they are soaring into conversation with the moon, discovering the nuance and meaning within the self through investigation into the other.
The collection’s epigraph is from Laozi and reads,
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
So, too, is this nebulous vertigo, to be carried with you.
In “Be Quiet in the Miso Soup,” Ling writes this:
If there’s too much, or too little
that makes me know not,
please let me go back
to the centre of it all,
to sit, and to forget,
to sit, and to forget.
They are the last two stanzas of the third poem in the collection, and they serve as a suggestion, admonition, and invitation to the reader. Each poem is a “far province / of many secrets” that the reader should sit in the center of. Certainty of meaning can come and go, be remembered and forgotten, rediscovered and re-enjoyed.
Ling’s musings are not limited to words alone. “Let’s Go Back to Grass Flower Head,” “Miss Wong Says,” and other poems use visual art as well in their storytelling. It introduces another layer of imagery into the latter’s storyline as Miss Wong schools and berates: “It’s not like this!” But the poem’s speaker is more concerned with “A self with a multitude of selves: I’m the one-hundred-written… / a silenced mantra.”
In the next poem, “So, Is that How Light Travels?” the speaker’s conversation with the moon is evanescent, hopeful, and regal.
To whose face you’re talking? the moon asks.
To whom, so brightly, you’re paying tribute? I ask the moon.
The mundane and the mythical, the simplistic and the convoluted, careen into one another in Ling’s thoughtful, assertive, and whimsical collection. In one moment, the reader is firmly planted with both feet on the practical ground. In the next, they are soaring into conversation with the moon, discovering the nuance and meaning within the self through investigation into the other.
The collection’s epigraph is from Laozi and reads,
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
So, too, is this nebulous vertigo, to be carried with you.
May 5, 2025
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews