The Old Philosopher

by Vi Khi Nao Vi Khi

The Old Philosopher is enigmatic, sexual, biblical, anachronistic, political, and personal all at once. These quiet, implosive poems inhabit a nonlinear temporality in which Vi Khi Nao brings biblical time and political time together in the same poetic space, allowing current affairs to converse with a more ancient and historical reality.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 3, 2016

Reviews

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my third time through this collection, and each time it impresses me more. I imagine the whole thing being written all in one breath, so that we get this flowing mesh where depictions of family and Vietnam mix with meditations on god, the body, and love.

There's an effortless quality to the book, especially in how disproportionate it is, though I think it can be divided into 3 loose movements: an initial, very fragmented section (that makes a very good use of the surface of the page), where the book has an almost metaphysical tone... which gives way to a series of narrative poems where we see so many different images of love in so many different forms, and finally to a prose sequence where a lot of the themes start to cohere. There's no rigid division between the sections, and I appreciate how natural it all feels, even if the form of each poem is always different from the last.

There's a strong sense of feeling in this book, which I really appreciate. Every moment is resonant; every line is charged this sort of glowing sense of immanence, a sense of feeling so intense intense bodies can't contain it. I've mostly given up poetry over the last few years because it's so rare for it to make me feel anything anymore, but this collection is exactly the opposite. The whole thing is always moving, always flowing, except there's this acute attention to feeling and sometimes even humor--but of course, more than anything, to the beauty of the language along the way.

[Jenna]

My review of this book appears at Fanzine: http://thefanzine.com/what-makes-us-h...

[Heather Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I only just discovered Vi Khi Nao through this stunning collection of joyful and subversively playful poems, The Old Philosopher, and I can't wait to dive into the rest of her work! There is god as child, god pretending and in make-believe, god with a lower-case g. But out of this play comes such a fierce creative force. In the poem, "AA Meeting for a Limestone" the poet reels into a delphic riff on pain, "They are going to cut me into slats./ And they are going to edge my pretty face..."

And out of play and through delirium comes something prophetic and oracle, "I tell you the stars are moving lightly/ & the birds are flapping in fright/They float aimlessly in the ether."

So much of the poetry in this collection churns in the body, thyroid glands, diaphragms, esophagus, and mouth. The poet writes, "The Heart is a quiet mountain in the Northern hemisphere of the Body" and while god may be lower-case, Body is scared, holy, and Otherness brought as close as breath.

Jeremiah, the Biblical prophet, makes an appearance in the poem, "How Can Something So Unmoving Move Everything Around It" with his warning of the heart's deceit and the poet meets the prophet and pushes back hard, upending condemnation (and its patriarchal overtones) with a kind of delightful and knowing and sly threat. The first poem of the collection asserts this upending of god with the self as god and of a "transgender performance art as identity." This poem feels like the enactment of that, speaking this transformation into being.

The title poem takes a meditative turn, and that's one of the things I love so much about this collection. It continues to veer and turn, accelerate and free fall, like a roller coaster, effortless and thrilling. I can't wait to experience more of her work!

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if the epiphany you seek was not in the pages of a self-help book but in a collection of sublime poetry? What if you could come away from a reading experience a better person? This was my experience of "The Old Philosopher."
Vi Khi Nao handles the pen with deft precision to lead the reader into the world of his or her own interior. The poetry is at once gentle and disruptive, devastating and redemptive. Let the work wash over you and come away baptized in an unique expression of yourself reflected back from the mirror-heart of one of the Inspired poets of our age. -Jeff Key artist/activist

[Jeff T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

You may have to read
the book twice and
read each word of
each poem separately
to recall what these poems
are doing to you but
you probably will be glad

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

while you buried your smell like i buried snow—as if yesterday couldn’t stand to be by itself

[Patricia’s Book Summaries · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved many of the poems in here, especially Pastoral Threshold and Chorus of Buttons. Many of the poems had great first lines.

This is the prompt by the author for reviews:
Go to page 24. The poem poem has 6 words
Hypertropied Football Star As Serial Killer
Use those words in the review, but not necessarily in that order.
The review should be 217 words.

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a hard collection to get through. Not due to heaviness of subject matter, but more due to the nonsensical and meaninglessness of the poems and images. Nothing feels connected in this book or in any of the poems. All of the language was esoteric and ungrounded. The only poem I enjoyed reading was My Socialist Saliva because it was the first poem that was grounded in place and time. I often give poets the benefit of doubt and am generous. I suspend my need for meaning when reading poetry, but this collection really did not land well. The sequence of narrative poems about made up people and lives felt forced and pointless, and I found myself asking why it was even present in the collection.

[KLC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love good poetry but, for some reason, this didn't click with me the way some poetry has done in the past. It just isn't for me. That doesn't mean it isn't good. It's wonderful. I can appreciate the poet's skill, I just didn't feel emotionally involved with most of the entries. That being said, there were a couple of poems that I can't stop thinking about.

I'm not educated in poetry, it's just something I've picked up by reading so much in my life. Someone who is more fluent in the art will probably devour this book and absolutely love it.

[Malola · Rating 2 out of 5]

"One word will condemn another word
Or annihilate another completely"

Yeah, except for that quote above, this book did nothing for me.
Everything seems fragmented, but not in a good way... almost like all over the place without actually saying much.

I know, I know... "Unpopular opinion" given everyone else's reviews. *shrugs*
I might read her short stories, though. It might be the difficultly I have in reading poetry and extracting its meaning.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There are different names for the heart:
Mount Hood, for instance, which lies
In Oregon like an alligator."

I thought this collection was good but not great — worth reading, but nothing that punched me in the face the way I like my poems to do. My favorite poems were the POV ones beginning with "Pastoral Threshold" (which was also my favorite among them) and "Skyscraper."

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant and soft and hard and funny and heartbreaking and overwhelming. It's a wonder.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but unfortunately I could find equal nuance, meaning, and emotion in a random word generator. Clearly I just don't get it, so it's not for me.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

One hell of a prolific writer. This book is a gem.

[Davide · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked several of the poems at the front of the book, but the book becomes quickly garrulous and so perverted it felt awkward to read.

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE ENIGMATIC DEMOISELLE, ELOIGN
A crowd gathers at the opening paragraph
A crowd of words
Afraid to look at other words
For what they might see
The ‘t’ in ‘tenuous’ is excited about the ‘t’ in ‘tampion’
We are wearing matching shoes
Words are fearful of their origins
One word will condemn another word
Or annihilate another completely
Lynch that man
That brisk fascist
Or remove that vixen
She doesn’t belong in our elite
Class of linguistic nobility
Words gather and group themselves into families
Ones that share similar symmetries
Or think they would like to bring another member
One especially that doesn’t belong here
Let me introduce you to the enigmatic demoiselle, Eloign
Please say hello. Welcome. Welcome
Social pressures and semantic infrastructure prevent words
From being individuals
Why can’t I stay alone in an empty room?
Floating from one blank page into another
Some words are deliberately weak
Join a club. Being a member of many things
Happy to find themselves, appearing in a maxim
Right here I won’t become extinct
Or disappear into the past
Or get snatched away like a child in front of a bus stop
Words refuse to elucidate
Their clans of urgent meaning
After they kiss each other goodbye—
They disperse into a field of nonsense
Or into a cliché
Many words enter a queue
Collaborate with one another
To form an allegiance
Of melancholy
Many exist in nomadic tribes
Called The Sentences
Many prefer to live in fragment
Refusing to tame their unruly insinuations
A few words remain sentient in a mansion
Gazing down at imposing height
At their aristocratic isolation
But before the god of elocution
Words are merely nudes
In their veneer sense of homelessness.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book surprised me and I'm glad I read it. Favorites include "In the Diurnal Bath" and "Despotic Hush."

[Ryan Bollenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharp, quiet, funny, violent, intense, incisive, narrative, lyric. Philosophical even. Political even. Some of the most intense and dense-but-breathy poems collections I've read in a long time.