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Eye Level: Poems
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Juan Felipe Herrera
For years now, I’ve been using the wrong palette.
Each year with its itchy blue, as the bruise of solitude reaches its expiration date.
Planes and buses, guesthouse to guesthouse.
I’ve gotten to where I am by dint of my poor eyesight,
my overreactive motion sickness.
9 p.m., Hanoi’s Old duck porridge and plum wine.
Voices outside the door come to a soft boil.
—from “Phnom Penh Dry Season”
Jenny Xie’s award-winning debut, Eye Level, takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here—colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes—bring to life questions about the self as seer and the self as seen. As Xie writes, “Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.” Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception—both to the tangible world and to “all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach.”
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Juan Felipe Herrera
For years now, I’ve been using the wrong palette.
Each year with its itchy blue, as the bruise of solitude reaches its expiration date.
Planes and buses, guesthouse to guesthouse.
I’ve gotten to where I am by dint of my poor eyesight,
my overreactive motion sickness.
9 p.m., Hanoi’s Old duck porridge and plum wine.
Voices outside the door come to a soft boil.
—from “Phnom Penh Dry Season”
Jenny Xie’s award-winning debut, Eye Level, takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here—colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes—bring to life questions about the self as seer and the self as seen. As Xie writes, “Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.” Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception—both to the tangible world and to “all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach.”
95 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 3, 2018
60 people are currently reading
3382 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Xie
7 books74 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her chapbook, Nowhere To Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017) received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Kundiman, and New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2020, she was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise.
Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her chapbook, Nowhere To Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017) received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Kundiman, and New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2020, she was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 246 reviews
April 3, 2020
I’ve grown lean from eating only the past.
(From Corfu)
Two years ago, I ventured into a year project of reading one woman author for every letter of the alphabet. Unsurprisingly it was quite a challenge to find a suitable book for the ‘X’, so when Jenny Xie’s debut poetry collection Eye Level popped up in the feed thanks to a friend reading the collection, it came as heaven-sent.
Ongoing
Never mind the distances traveled, the companion
she made of herself. The threadbare twenties not
to be underestimated. A wild depression that ripped
from January into April. And still she sprouts an appetite.
Insisting on edges and cores, when there were none.
Relationships annealed through shared ambivalences.
Pages that steadied her. Books that prowled her
until the hard daybreak, and for months after.
Separating new vows from the old, like laundry whites.
Small losses jammed together so as to gather mass.
Stored generations of filtered quietude.
And some stubbornness. Tangles along the way
the comb-teeth of the mind had to bite through, but for what.
She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
but they were lower, they were changing all the time.
Browsing through the collection again two years later, it was easy to resuscitate the impressions the lyric lines left on me: the beautiful flowing of the fragmentary thoughts over the pages, the radiant, sensory imagery suffused with scents of fruits, colours, city life, the mysterious and alluring voice of this young Chinese-American poet. Looking at the marks the pencil left I feel drawn in again by the aphoristic quality of some of the lines and stanza’s, miniature philosophical reflections on loneliness, belonging and love, melancholic observations evoking a family’s migrant experiences, the crossing of borders and cultures, alienation enhanced by linguistic inbetweenness and feelings of homelessness.
In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.
(From To Be a Good Buddhist Is Ensnarement)
The breadth and depth of Jenny Xie’s experiences and insights– or the ones of her poetical alter ego - seem to belie her young age, she enters into dialogue with ancient wisdom and poetry tapped from Chinese culture and literary tradition, inspired by ancient Chinese poets like Du Fu (712-770), Zen teachings (To Be a Good Buddhist Is Ensnarement) and the Japanese Zuihitsu genre (a literary genre ‘in which the text can drift like a cloud’, consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings, often musing on the impermanence of the material word). The three pages poem Zuihitsu, loose meditations on childhood, suffering, watching and being watched, seem to offer a clue in which light other poems can be understood as well, like the key poem Visual Order, gravitating around the overarching title theme of the sense of sight and seeing, the impact of the gaze and of perspective, contemplating the elusiveness of the past.
Evoking the nomadic nature of modern life in perpetual motion, the poet wanders from Hanoi, Corfu, New York to Phnom Penh, but most of all to her innermost self, as this collection is mostly ’tunnelling inwards’ (Solitude Study), almost every journey and motion spiralling the poet to her inner core, meditating on the relation between the self and others, vacillating between inner and outer landscapes. Despite motion, despite ‘developing an appetite for elsewhere’ we cannot escape introspection, as we take ourselves with us, wherever we go:
Travelling and travelling
but so much interior
unpicked over by the eyes.
Nothing is as far as here.
(From Long nights)
The wonderful still life photograph on the cover from the Chinese photographer Shen Wei reminded me of the 13th century Chinese painting Six Persimmons. It belongs to his series ‘Table settings’, which is a part of a project documenting a New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene program that provides underserved communities with access to fresh fruit and vegetables via Green Carts.
Love’s laws are simple. The leaving take the lead.
The left-for takes a knife to the knots of the narrative.
Make no mistake: one cannot cover distance with more distance.
(From The hunt)
A collection of translucent, reflective and perceptive poetry to which I will probably return now and then.
Hard wired
A misfortune can swell
for a long, long time in the mind.
While goodness shrinks
down to a hard shell.
I reach for the hammer,
but it doesn’t crack.
Evolutionary, it makes sense.
These fishbone days, this fatty grief.
(From Corfu)
Two years ago, I ventured into a year project of reading one woman author for every letter of the alphabet. Unsurprisingly it was quite a challenge to find a suitable book for the ‘X’, so when Jenny Xie’s debut poetry collection Eye Level popped up in the feed thanks to a friend reading the collection, it came as heaven-sent.
Ongoing
Never mind the distances traveled, the companion
she made of herself. The threadbare twenties not
to be underestimated. A wild depression that ripped
from January into April. And still she sprouts an appetite.
Insisting on edges and cores, when there were none.
Relationships annealed through shared ambivalences.
Pages that steadied her. Books that prowled her
until the hard daybreak, and for months after.
Separating new vows from the old, like laundry whites.
Small losses jammed together so as to gather mass.
Stored generations of filtered quietude.
And some stubbornness. Tangles along the way
the comb-teeth of the mind had to bite through, but for what.
She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
but they were lower, they were changing all the time.
Browsing through the collection again two years later, it was easy to resuscitate the impressions the lyric lines left on me: the beautiful flowing of the fragmentary thoughts over the pages, the radiant, sensory imagery suffused with scents of fruits, colours, city life, the mysterious and alluring voice of this young Chinese-American poet. Looking at the marks the pencil left I feel drawn in again by the aphoristic quality of some of the lines and stanza’s, miniature philosophical reflections on loneliness, belonging and love, melancholic observations evoking a family’s migrant experiences, the crossing of borders and cultures, alienation enhanced by linguistic inbetweenness and feelings of homelessness.
In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.
(From To Be a Good Buddhist Is Ensnarement)
The breadth and depth of Jenny Xie’s experiences and insights– or the ones of her poetical alter ego - seem to belie her young age, she enters into dialogue with ancient wisdom and poetry tapped from Chinese culture and literary tradition, inspired by ancient Chinese poets like Du Fu (712-770), Zen teachings (To Be a Good Buddhist Is Ensnarement) and the Japanese Zuihitsu genre (a literary genre ‘in which the text can drift like a cloud’, consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings, often musing on the impermanence of the material word). The three pages poem Zuihitsu, loose meditations on childhood, suffering, watching and being watched, seem to offer a clue in which light other poems can be understood as well, like the key poem Visual Order, gravitating around the overarching title theme of the sense of sight and seeing, the impact of the gaze and of perspective, contemplating the elusiveness of the past.
Evoking the nomadic nature of modern life in perpetual motion, the poet wanders from Hanoi, Corfu, New York to Phnom Penh, but most of all to her innermost self, as this collection is mostly ’tunnelling inwards’ (Solitude Study), almost every journey and motion spiralling the poet to her inner core, meditating on the relation between the self and others, vacillating between inner and outer landscapes. Despite motion, despite ‘developing an appetite for elsewhere’ we cannot escape introspection, as we take ourselves with us, wherever we go:
Travelling and travelling
but so much interior
unpicked over by the eyes.
Nothing is as far as here.
(From Long nights)
The wonderful still life photograph on the cover from the Chinese photographer Shen Wei reminded me of the 13th century Chinese painting Six Persimmons. It belongs to his series ‘Table settings’, which is a part of a project documenting a New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene program that provides underserved communities with access to fresh fruit and vegetables via Green Carts.
Love’s laws are simple. The leaving take the lead.
The left-for takes a knife to the knots of the narrative.
Make no mistake: one cannot cover distance with more distance.
(From The hunt)
A collection of translucent, reflective and perceptive poetry to which I will probably return now and then.
Hard wired
A misfortune can swell
for a long, long time in the mind.
While goodness shrinks
down to a hard shell.
I reach for the hammer,
but it doesn’t crack.
Evolutionary, it makes sense.
These fishbone days, this fatty grief.
May 1, 2019
At present, on this sleeper train, there's nowhere to arrive.
Me? I'm just here in my traveler's clothes, trying on each passing town for size.
So. This was a great read, and I felt there was just the right amount of poems, even if the book itself is slim. The poems talk about complex relationships between geography and self, being here and wanting there, and the atmosphere and beauty of all these poems is almost possible to sense.
This book was an award-winner and a finalist in another award. The poems vary in looks, and are spread sparsely - but no too much - on pages. Some are clearly of times spent traveling, or just have their places named (like Phnom Penh, Vietnam, Corfu, and New York's Chinatown), some are just 'home' back garden. Seasons also vary, pictures are either brief or long (longish) chains.
Wooden spirit houses on the road to Kampot spray-painted gold, capacious
enough for a pot of incense, a rice bowl, and one can of Fanta.
I see all those weathers, vehicles, details, movements, atmospheres of seasons, objects, sounds, thoughts, speeds (and lack of), eating, family pasts & beliefs, practicing Zen, fishbones here and there...
This read is beautiful, and you want more of it. Time to reread, then?
April 7, 2024
In this National Book Award finalist, the theme that connects many of the poems is eyes, vision, insight. Xie is into space, too, making the choice of a white cover appropriate because the eyes will meet lots of pages where white space dwarves words. Thrifty, that. Like many of the ancient Chinese poems that inspired Xie.
As might be expected in any collection, some of the poems work better than others. Also, readers sensitive too it might classify some pieces as too much self and ego (as in navel-gazing). Where that line goes, though, is debatable at best, as much of lyric poetry troubles itself with the troubled self, the only question being: Will it interest readers who will see themselves in the poet?
Still, you allow. Sustaining great poetry brings Atlas to mind and makes one bend a mile in his shoulders. A poem I enjoyed will give you a taste of Xie's style:
"Melancholia"
The black dog approaches?
I pry open the crooked jaw.
Inside?
A heady odor, elemental.
And then?
I sing through my life again.
How so?
Slow and fast, fast and slow.
What follows?
Time, the oil of it.
What direction?
Solitude throws me off the scent.
And what lies ahead?
Even the future recoils, long as it is.
What points the finger?
All of my eye's mistakes.
And what were they?
Level.
Ah. Notice the collection's title, peering through the sadness at the end? And how the question-answer, question-answer, rocks you gently? Kind of like life, when you feel under siege by melancholia.
If you like the poem above, I've shared another from this collection on on my website.
And if you like that one, too, you probably should make this part of your 2019 manifest.
As might be expected in any collection, some of the poems work better than others. Also, readers sensitive too it might classify some pieces as too much self and ego (as in navel-gazing). Where that line goes, though, is debatable at best, as much of lyric poetry troubles itself with the troubled self, the only question being: Will it interest readers who will see themselves in the poet?
Still, you allow. Sustaining great poetry brings Atlas to mind and makes one bend a mile in his shoulders. A poem I enjoyed will give you a taste of Xie's style:
"Melancholia"
The black dog approaches?
I pry open the crooked jaw.
Inside?
A heady odor, elemental.
And then?
I sing through my life again.
How so?
Slow and fast, fast and slow.
What follows?
Time, the oil of it.
What direction?
Solitude throws me off the scent.
And what lies ahead?
Even the future recoils, long as it is.
What points the finger?
All of my eye's mistakes.
And what were they?
Level.
Ah. Notice the collection's title, peering through the sadness at the end? And how the question-answer, question-answer, rocks you gently? Kind of like life, when you feel under siege by melancholia.
If you like the poem above, I've shared another from this collection on on my website.
And if you like that one, too, you probably should make this part of your 2019 manifest.
August 27, 2021
I recommend listening to the author reading some of these poems on Youtube to experience them as she intends and get an idea of the rhythm and cadence. She also explains that Zuihitsu, the title of one of the poems, is Japanese for follow the brush, which means that you let the brush makes its way without the mind interfering. It makes for a very interesting poem.
My favorite poems are Corfu and Naturalization.
Phrases I found particularly poignant:
"The island has two hard-boiled hills."
"I've grown lean from eating only the past."
"Weekends, we paw at cheap silverware at yard sales."
My favorite poems are Corfu and Naturalization.
Phrases I found particularly poignant:
"The island has two hard-boiled hills."
"I've grown lean from eating only the past."
"Weekends, we paw at cheap silverware at yard sales."
March 19, 2020
Tore my fucking life apart
reread March 19, 2020
This book has a lot of poems about isolation, it would be a good one to read it you're social distancing!
Her words are magic. She believes in the literariness of literature, and I love her for that.
This book combines western and eastern literary theory, it is a fascinating rumination on the self and how we are situated in familial lines. She talks about finding the ever-changing answers "lower than eye-level"
reread March 19, 2020
This book has a lot of poems about isolation, it would be a good one to read it you're social distancing!
Her words are magic. She believes in the literariness of literature, and I love her for that.
This book combines western and eastern literary theory, it is a fascinating rumination on the self and how we are situated in familial lines. She talks about finding the ever-changing answers "lower than eye-level"
May 9, 2020
I think I’ve found my new favorite poetry book.
I’ve never read a collection quite like this. It has an almost fragmentary, stream of consciousness feeling to it, yet simultaneously feels so developed, a well of possibility and interpretation sunk into each poem.
While some of her poems rhymed, even those that didn’t had a beautifully poetic, flowing nature. Jenny Xie truly understands how to make works flow from one to another, thinking through how they feel in the mouth and the mind. None of the non-rhyming poems had the more disconnected nature that some modern poetry can fall into, nor did they feel like plain sentences with a few line breaks tossed in for style.
Im completely and utterly blown away.
One of my absolute favorites from the collection:
——
ALIKE, YET NOT QUITE
After Li Shangyin
Thin fish bones arranged on the bone plate, a bracelet
Blushing after wine and high sun
The Buddhist nun, like a tipped glass, emptying through the mouth
Smell of shadows in both March and October
Solitude and coarse wanting, wedged stubbornly
The railway conductor’s face, blank as the underside of a river
Paper gown at the gynecologist’s office, onion skin, easy to part
Unhurried, the knife against the vegetable or the meat
Astonishment of being left and of choosing to leave
I’ve never read a collection quite like this. It has an almost fragmentary, stream of consciousness feeling to it, yet simultaneously feels so developed, a well of possibility and interpretation sunk into each poem.
While some of her poems rhymed, even those that didn’t had a beautifully poetic, flowing nature. Jenny Xie truly understands how to make works flow from one to another, thinking through how they feel in the mouth and the mind. None of the non-rhyming poems had the more disconnected nature that some modern poetry can fall into, nor did they feel like plain sentences with a few line breaks tossed in for style.
Im completely and utterly blown away.
One of my absolute favorites from the collection:
——
ALIKE, YET NOT QUITE
After Li Shangyin
Thin fish bones arranged on the bone plate, a bracelet
Blushing after wine and high sun
The Buddhist nun, like a tipped glass, emptying through the mouth
Smell of shadows in both March and October
Solitude and coarse wanting, wedged stubbornly
The railway conductor’s face, blank as the underside of a river
Paper gown at the gynecologist’s office, onion skin, easy to part
Unhurried, the knife against the vegetable or the meat
Astonishment of being left and of choosing to leave
March 25, 2019
(Longlisted for the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize.) Xie, who was born in Hefei, China and grew up in New Jersey, now teaches at New York University. Her poems focus on the sense of displacement that goes hand in hand with immigration or just everyday travel, and on familial and evolutionary inheritance.
The opening sequence of poems is set in Vietnam, Cambodia and Corfu, with heat and rain as common experiences that also enter into the imagery: “See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet // over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves” and “The riled heat reaches the river shoal before it reaches the dark.” The tragic and the trivial get mixed up in ordinary sightseeing:
Seeing and being seen are a primary concern, with the “eye” of the title deliberately echoing the “I” that narrates most of the poems. I actually wondered if there was a bit too much first person in the book, which always complicates the question of whether the narrator equals the poet. One tends to assume that the story of a father going to study in the USA and the wife following, giving up her work as a doctor for a dining hall job, is autobiographical. The same goes for the experiences in “Naturalization” and “Exile.”
The metaphors Xie uses for places are particularly striking, often likening a city/country to a garment or a person’s appearance: “Seeing the collars of this city open / I wish for higher meaning and its histrionics to cease,” “The new country is ill fitting, lined / with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves,” and “Here’s to this new country: / bald and without center.”
The poet contemplates what she has absorbed from her family line and upbringing, and remembers the sting of feeling left behind when a romance ends:
Those last two lines are a good example of the collection’s reliance on alliteration, which, along with repetition, is used much more often than end rhymes and internal or slant rhymes. Speaking of which, this was my favorite pair of lines:
Meanwhile, my single favorite poem was “Hardwired,” about the tendency to dwell on the negative.
Though I didn’t always connect with Xie’s style – it can be slightly detached and formal in a way that is almost at odds with the fairly personal subject matter, and there were some pronouncements that seemed to me not as profound as they intended to be (it may well be that her work would be best read aloud) – there were occasional lines and images that pulled me up short and made me think, Yes, she gets it. What it’s like to be from one place but live in another; what it’s like to be fond but also fearful of the ways in which you resemble your parents. I expect this to be a strong contender for the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist, which will be announced on April 2nd. The winner is then announced on May 16th.
Originally published, with images, on my blog, Bookish Beck.
The opening sequence of poems is set in Vietnam, Cambodia and Corfu, with heat and rain as common experiences that also enter into the imagery: “See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet // over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves” and “The riled heat reaches the river shoal before it reaches the dark.” The tragic and the trivial get mixed up in ordinary sightseeing:
The tourists curate vacation stories,
days summed up in a few lines.
Killing fields tour, Sambo the elephant
in clotted street traffic,
dusky-complexioned children hesitant in their approach.
Seeing and being seen are a primary concern, with the “eye” of the title deliberately echoing the “I” that narrates most of the poems. I actually wondered if there was a bit too much first person in the book, which always complicates the question of whether the narrator equals the poet. One tends to assume that the story of a father going to study in the USA and the wife following, giving up her work as a doctor for a dining hall job, is autobiographical. The same goes for the experiences in “Naturalization” and “Exile.”
The metaphors Xie uses for places are particularly striking, often likening a city/country to a garment or a person’s appearance: “Seeing the collars of this city open / I wish for higher meaning and its histrionics to cease,” “The new country is ill fitting, lined / with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves,” and “Here’s to this new country: / bald and without center.”
The poet contemplates what she has absorbed from her family line and upbringing, and remembers the sting of feeling left behind when a romance ends:
I thought I owned my worries, but here I was only pulled along by the needle
of genetics, by my mother’s tendency to pry at openings in her life.
Love’s laws are simple. The leaving take the lead.
The left-for takes a knife to the knots of narrative.
Those last two lines are a good example of the collection’s reliance on alliteration, which, along with repetition, is used much more often than end rhymes and internal or slant rhymes. Speaking of which, this was my favorite pair of lines:
Slant rhyme of current thinking
and past thinking.
Meanwhile, my single favorite poem was “Hardwired,” about the tendency to dwell on the negative.
Though I didn’t always connect with Xie’s style – it can be slightly detached and formal in a way that is almost at odds with the fairly personal subject matter, and there were some pronouncements that seemed to me not as profound as they intended to be (it may well be that her work would be best read aloud) – there were occasional lines and images that pulled me up short and made me think, Yes, she gets it. What it’s like to be from one place but live in another; what it’s like to be fond but also fearful of the ways in which you resemble your parents. I expect this to be a strong contender for the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist, which will be announced on April 2nd. The winner is then announced on May 16th.
Originally published, with images, on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 11, 2021
"I've grown lean from eating only the past." - Line 9 of "Corfu"
I was supposed to have read this book in–at most–two weeks and then review it, but I ran out of inertia emotionally and spiritually and after almost 2.5 moths away I have finally finished it. This is an interesting book. It is the personal recollections of the author on her life and travels and of the writer. While it did not leave me speechless, it has a lot of good lines in it. I can't remember how I discovered this book, but I had been curious about reading it for awhile. Though I suppose the book is relevant given the news of the past year, it is an interesting travel diary/meditation all its own.
"Look at how I perform for you
Look at how you perform for me
An eye for an eye
is how you and I
take on forms in the mind" - stanza 13 of "Visual Orders"
I am always impressed at how poets are able to use words to create the scene in your mind's eye. The "mind's eye" is what this book is quite literally about and the poet makes references to the title throughout the book. Xie is looking back somberly on her life on the road and is put between nostalgia and melancholia (literally has a poem with that name). She thinks of her time as an immigrant in New York City's Chinatown and her travels throughout Southeast Asia great detail.
I hope I can convey that this is an interesting book to read for someone who likes to read poetry of different people's experiences. I know I am not doing a great job at describing the book because I am still a little bit rusty with my reviewing skills after 2 months. This was an interesting look at a life that could not be more different than my own. And did I mention it has a lot of good quotes.
As a bonus here is Jenny Xie'smusic poetry video for her poem "Chinatown Diptych": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2vUq...
I was supposed to have read this book in–at most–two weeks and then review it, but I ran out of inertia emotionally and spiritually and after almost 2.5 moths away I have finally finished it. This is an interesting book. It is the personal recollections of the author on her life and travels and of the writer. While it did not leave me speechless, it has a lot of good lines in it. I can't remember how I discovered this book, but I had been curious about reading it for awhile. Though I suppose the book is relevant given the news of the past year, it is an interesting travel diary/meditation all its own.
"Look at how I perform for you
Look at how you perform for me
An eye for an eye
is how you and I
take on forms in the mind" - stanza 13 of "Visual Orders"
I am always impressed at how poets are able to use words to create the scene in your mind's eye. The "mind's eye" is what this book is quite literally about and the poet makes references to the title throughout the book. Xie is looking back somberly on her life on the road and is put between nostalgia and melancholia (literally has a poem with that name). She thinks of her time as an immigrant in New York City's Chinatown and her travels throughout Southeast Asia great detail.
I hope I can convey that this is an interesting book to read for someone who likes to read poetry of different people's experiences. I know I am not doing a great job at describing the book because I am still a little bit rusty with my reviewing skills after 2 months. This was an interesting look at a life that could not be more different than my own. And did I mention it has a lot of good quotes.
As a bonus here is Jenny Xie's
September 27, 2018
This NBA longlisted poetry collection explores the inner life and connections to people and places. The author seems to struggle with the way language is often unable to bridge the gap between the self and the outside world. Multiple poems detail observations, as if from a great distance, of various locations - Corfu, Phnom Penh, etc. Others explore failed attempts to use language for connection.
December 30, 2020
Her gaze breaks each time
at the same place.
There is no reversing —
didn’t she know?
She has to go at it from the side.
she has to keep circling.
Echoing Tracy K. Smith’s voice - Jenny Xie's voice is one that helps me, quite simply, to live.
at the same place.
There is no reversing —
didn’t she know?
She has to go at it from the side.
she has to keep circling.
Echoing Tracy K. Smith’s voice - Jenny Xie's voice is one that helps me, quite simply, to live.
August 12, 2022
Pensive yet utterly mind-blowing. I only wish I'd read it sooner.
September 25, 2018
ROOTLESS
Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields
and no two brick houses in a row.
I mean, no three—
See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet
over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves.
Hours ago, I crossed a motorbike with a hog strapped to its seat,
the size of a date pit from a distance.
Can this solitude be rootless, unhooked from the ground?
No matter. The mind resides both inside and out.
It can think itself and think itself into existence.
I sponge off the eyes, no worse for wear.
My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns.
At present, on this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive.
Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.
TO BE A GOOD BUDDHIST IS ENSNAREMENT
The Zen priest says I am everything I am not.
In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.
I must believe there is no need to believe in thoughts.
Oblivious to appetites that appear to be exits, and also entrances.
What is there to hoard when the worldly realm has no permanent vacancies?
Ten years I’ve taken to this mind fasting.
My shadow these days is bare.
It drives a stranger, a good fool.
Nothing can surprise.
Clarity is just questioning having eaten its fill.
Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields
and no two brick houses in a row.
I mean, no three—
See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet
over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves.
Hours ago, I crossed a motorbike with a hog strapped to its seat,
the size of a date pit from a distance.
Can this solitude be rootless, unhooked from the ground?
No matter. The mind resides both inside and out.
It can think itself and think itself into existence.
I sponge off the eyes, no worse for wear.
My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns.
At present, on this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive.
Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.
TO BE A GOOD BUDDHIST IS ENSNAREMENT
The Zen priest says I am everything I am not.
In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.
I must believe there is no need to believe in thoughts.
Oblivious to appetites that appear to be exits, and also entrances.
What is there to hoard when the worldly realm has no permanent vacancies?
Ten years I’ve taken to this mind fasting.
My shadow these days is bare.
It drives a stranger, a good fool.
Nothing can surprise.
Clarity is just questioning having eaten its fill.
April 7, 2023
One of those collections where I'm not always entirely sure what's going on—but where figuring it out (and being forced to read slowly while doing so) is enjoyable all the same.
December 14, 2019
"Men and women came and went.
The city was dry, and then it wasn't.
I knelt to the passing time."
Man ļoti patika. Paldies autorei.
The city was dry, and then it wasn't.
I knelt to the passing time."
Man ļoti patika. Paldies autorei.
May 30, 2023
A powerful collection of meditations on solitude, depression, rootlessness and other themes. I borrowed the book from the library but plan on purchasing a copy so I can reread it.
January 9, 2019
Jenny Xie's spare accuracy of expression was really engaging to me from the start. The first poem in the book, Rootless, is just the beginning of a book filled with poems about traveling or living in other countries, being an immigrant, or descriptions of the dislocated foreign traveler.
Two back-to-back poems toward the beginning of the book are my favorites, Phnom Penh Diptych: Wet Season and Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season. There were many lines that brought to mind my experience living 7 years in South Korea...the discovery that it is just...different...not what one is used to or different ways of doing things. The experience of weather, in this case, semi-tropical rains that happen daily, and for a good portion of the year...the hectic busy activity of a city that never turns the lights out and never seems to sleep. Here is a line...
Fixtures: slack lips of suitcases, lukewarm showers up to three times in a day.
Mosquito bites on the arms and thighs, patterned like pips on dice.
An hour before midnight, the corners of the city begin to peel.
Alley of sex workers, tinny folk songs pushed through speakers.
Karaoke bars bracketed by vendors hawking salted crickets.
How do eyes and ears keep pace?
I remember having this very same thought in the first year I lived in Busan, Korea....bright neon from Karaoke bars, cars everywhere, street vendors called pojangmachas hawking exotic foods from the nearby ocean that I would have never thought were edible.
I found myself wondering how much of what she writes is autobiographical. The experience of living or traveling abroad is a common theme throughout many of the poems, but so is immigrant experience. Her brief bio on Goodreads notes that she was born in Hefei, China but was raised in New Jersey...thinking about this I found this poem particularly poignant...
NATURALIZATION
His tongue shorn, father confuses
snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken.
It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap
silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother
to keep our telephone number close,
my beaded coin purse closer. I do this.
The years are slow to pass, heavy footed.
Because the visits are frequent, we memorize
shame's numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds,
run up and down stairways, chew the wind.
Such were the times. All of us nearsighted.
Grandmother prays for fortune
to keep us around and on a short leash.
The new country is ill fitting, lined
with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves
The last two lines...
This is one of several very good poetry books I have read this year. Jenny Xie's poetry in particular was readily accessible and spoke to me because of the common experience of having lived and traveled abroad for more than just a vacation. There is an economy of language, many poems with two-line stanzas that succinctly spelled out the narrative of each poem.
And the cover....yes, I know books are about what's inside but I was so drawn to the cover when I first pulled it off the shelf, I knew I would like this little volume from the start.
Two back-to-back poems toward the beginning of the book are my favorites, Phnom Penh Diptych: Wet Season and Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season. There were many lines that brought to mind my experience living 7 years in South Korea...the discovery that it is just...different...not what one is used to or different ways of doing things. The experience of weather, in this case, semi-tropical rains that happen daily, and for a good portion of the year...the hectic busy activity of a city that never turns the lights out and never seems to sleep. Here is a line...
Fixtures: slack lips of suitcases, lukewarm showers up to three times in a day.
Mosquito bites on the arms and thighs, patterned like pips on dice.
An hour before midnight, the corners of the city begin to peel.
Alley of sex workers, tinny folk songs pushed through speakers.
Karaoke bars bracketed by vendors hawking salted crickets.
How do eyes and ears keep pace?
I remember having this very same thought in the first year I lived in Busan, Korea....bright neon from Karaoke bars, cars everywhere, street vendors called pojangmachas hawking exotic foods from the nearby ocean that I would have never thought were edible.
I found myself wondering how much of what she writes is autobiographical. The experience of living or traveling abroad is a common theme throughout many of the poems, but so is immigrant experience. Her brief bio on Goodreads notes that she was born in Hefei, China but was raised in New Jersey...thinking about this I found this poem particularly poignant...
NATURALIZATION
His tongue shorn, father confuses
snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken.
It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap
silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother
to keep our telephone number close,
my beaded coin purse closer. I do this.
The years are slow to pass, heavy footed.
Because the visits are frequent, we memorize
shame's numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds,
run up and down stairways, chew the wind.
Such were the times. All of us nearsighted.
Grandmother prays for fortune
to keep us around and on a short leash.
The new country is ill fitting, lined
with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves
The last two lines...
This is one of several very good poetry books I have read this year. Jenny Xie's poetry in particular was readily accessible and spoke to me because of the common experience of having lived and traveled abroad for more than just a vacation. There is an economy of language, many poems with two-line stanzas that succinctly spelled out the narrative of each poem.
And the cover....yes, I know books are about what's inside but I was so drawn to the cover when I first pulled it off the shelf, I knew I would like this little volume from the start.
April 21, 2018
5 stars
Yes, 5. There isn't a single bad poem here. I was truly blown away by this collection.
The standout theme for me was the tension between inner and outer self. Xie writes sublimely about geography and the banality of place, but devotes just as much attention to the mental landscape. The reader sees Hanoi, Corfu, and many other locales through her eyes, and sees her loneliness beside them as a tangible presence. “What atrophies without the tending of a gaze? The visible object is constituted by sight. But where to spend one’s sight, a soft currency? To be profligate in taking in the outer world is to shortchange the interior one. // Though this assumes a clean separation, a zero-sum game.” ("Visual Orders," the entirety of which is just staggeringly good) Her mental state is the conduit through which the world around her is processed. “I’m still where I am, in conditions of low visibility. / Why not wait until I’ve waited why out?” ("Phnom Penh Diptych: Wet Season")
Sight is another major theme. "All I do is recede from the view / of those at my back. / Heeding only the tug of the interior." ("Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season") How she is seen, how she is perceived, and how she reacts to that perceived appearance. “One self prunes violently / at all the others / thinking she’s the gardener.” ("Tending")
And there there is the matter of time, and the uneasy existence on its continuum. "I've grown lean from eating only the past." ("Corfu") There is memory, and the expectation of doing something with the present to make it meaningful. “All of us living on loan—yet only some grasp the arrangement.” ("Private Property")
I don't necessarily think a collection of poems needs to be cohesive to be successful or admirable, but when a poet does achieve that feat it's very impressive for its rarity. While sometimes I read poetry collections like a series of snacks, this was more like a full, satisfying meal, one that will linger on the palate for a long time.
These are poems about belonging, about making a home in the world and in yourself.
Yes, 5. There isn't a single bad poem here. I was truly blown away by this collection.
The standout theme for me was the tension between inner and outer self. Xie writes sublimely about geography and the banality of place, but devotes just as much attention to the mental landscape. The reader sees Hanoi, Corfu, and many other locales through her eyes, and sees her loneliness beside them as a tangible presence. “What atrophies without the tending of a gaze? The visible object is constituted by sight. But where to spend one’s sight, a soft currency? To be profligate in taking in the outer world is to shortchange the interior one. // Though this assumes a clean separation, a zero-sum game.” ("Visual Orders," the entirety of which is just staggeringly good) Her mental state is the conduit through which the world around her is processed. “I’m still where I am, in conditions of low visibility. / Why not wait until I’ve waited why out?” ("Phnom Penh Diptych: Wet Season")
Sight is another major theme. "All I do is recede from the view / of those at my back. / Heeding only the tug of the interior." ("Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season") How she is seen, how she is perceived, and how she reacts to that perceived appearance. “One self prunes violently / at all the others / thinking she’s the gardener.” ("Tending")
And there there is the matter of time, and the uneasy existence on its continuum. "I've grown lean from eating only the past." ("Corfu") There is memory, and the expectation of doing something with the present to make it meaningful. “All of us living on loan—yet only some grasp the arrangement.” ("Private Property")
I don't necessarily think a collection of poems needs to be cohesive to be successful or admirable, but when a poet does achieve that feat it's very impressive for its rarity. While sometimes I read poetry collections like a series of snacks, this was more like a full, satisfying meal, one that will linger on the palate for a long time.
These are poems about belonging, about making a home in the world and in yourself.
August 10, 2019
Sigh. I'm so bad at poetry.
There were definitely a few lines, a few stanzas I found beautiful. But honestly I went through most of the poems in Eye Level wondering what they were about.
Actually, reading some of the reviews here has been helpful and illuminating. I wish there was a Genius for poems.
There were definitely a few lines, a few stanzas I found beautiful. But honestly I went through most of the poems in Eye Level wondering what they were about.
Actually, reading some of the reviews here has been helpful and illuminating. I wish there was a Genius for poems.
November 4, 2022
4.5 purely because im too stupid for some of these
June 13, 2024
I CAME ACROSS a couple of poems by Jenny Xie recently...in the New Yorker, I think, and somewhere else...which inspired me to read this, which has been sitting on the shelf since it won the Walt Whitman Award (now known as the "First Book Award") back in 2017.
It reads like a debut collection in the early going, with poems based on travel impressions ("Phnom Penh Diptych,""Corfu") and childhood memories of China ("Lunar New Year, 1988"), very visual and elliptical. The poems towards the latter half of the book seem written later--at least, they don't seem written with the intention of dazzling the rest of the workshop. They are more introspective, more candid, based on longer experience...more mature, in a way, but in the way suggested by Dylan's line, "I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now."
The first half of the book makes some canny transferred epithets, as when the description of a garment becomes a description of being an immigrant ("The new country is ill fitting, lined / with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves") or words that might describe a mother's hair are applied to her emotions ("Her sorrow has thickness and a certain sheen"). They are consistently skillful, but sometimes feel a bit designed or calculated.
The poems of the latter half seem not be trying so hard but to be getting more work done. Take a line like, "The simplicity of it is difficult" (from "A Slow Way"). Boom! as the mic hits the floor. Or Xie's pointing out that in the multiplicity of our selves, one of the selves will decide that it is boss:
One self prunes violently
at all the others
thinking she's the gardener.
I know I have a self that thinks it's the gardener, and I bet you do too.
Or the lines in which the book's title occurs:
She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
but they were lower, they were changing all the time.
Xie has published another collection of poems since this one, as well as a novel. If I am right that the poems in the latter part of Eye Level were written late than those in the first part, the second collection will be worth getting a hold of.
It reads like a debut collection in the early going, with poems based on travel impressions ("Phnom Penh Diptych,""Corfu") and childhood memories of China ("Lunar New Year, 1988"), very visual and elliptical. The poems towards the latter half of the book seem written later--at least, they don't seem written with the intention of dazzling the rest of the workshop. They are more introspective, more candid, based on longer experience...more mature, in a way, but in the way suggested by Dylan's line, "I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now."
The first half of the book makes some canny transferred epithets, as when the description of a garment becomes a description of being an immigrant ("The new country is ill fitting, lined / with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves") or words that might describe a mother's hair are applied to her emotions ("Her sorrow has thickness and a certain sheen"). They are consistently skillful, but sometimes feel a bit designed or calculated.
The poems of the latter half seem not be trying so hard but to be getting more work done. Take a line like, "The simplicity of it is difficult" (from "A Slow Way"). Boom! as the mic hits the floor. Or Xie's pointing out that in the multiplicity of our selves, one of the selves will decide that it is boss:
One self prunes violently
at all the others
thinking she's the gardener.
I know I have a self that thinks it's the gardener, and I bet you do too.
Or the lines in which the book's title occurs:
She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
but they were lower, they were changing all the time.
Xie has published another collection of poems since this one, as well as a novel. If I am right that the poems in the latter part of Eye Level were written late than those in the first part, the second collection will be worth getting a hold of.
April 7, 2024
It took me sometime to settle in this collection, maybe because I read Rupture Tense a year ago and it blew my mind. This collection is quieter, but just as strong, it's just a completely different tone and intensity than Rupture Tense. As I dug in, so much of the language bloomed around me. Line after line took my breath away. Xie has a way of twisting language, turning it upside down and building new meaning either in the words or in between the lines and between each word.
March 6, 2025
"If only the journey between two people/didn't take a lifetime."
May 24, 2025
#JennyXie4PoetLaureate
January 9, 2022
A work of true sublimity. It is hard to believe that this is a debut collection. The mastery over language is something to envy and admire. Grief, loneliness and family are written in a way that is entirely in a league of its own. This is one of those poetry books where you have to read it yourself to understand what it does so well.
This is a book I’ll keep returning to time and again, to admire the human capability to create a voice inside a noisy world and language out of ordinary speech.
This is a book I’ll keep returning to time and again, to admire the human capability to create a voice inside a noisy world and language out of ordinary speech.
July 30, 2018
I already know I need to reread this one. So linguistically and syntactically dense, I had to adjust my usual rhythms of reading poetry in order to osmote the bevy of philosophical and existential ponderings here. That is a good thing.
On a first read, this felt a little thematically unmoored - the language here is precise in its abstraction, shifting modes within individual poems often and certainly from one to the next, and that makes for a demanding collection. Recalibration is essential to following Xie's thinking here, and perhaps due to the styles of poetry I've been reading lately (largely conceptual, often with broadly-defined thematics), this demanded constant care from me as a reader. I wanted to effortlessly and organically pivot alongside the material, but I found myself needing to orient far more than usual. Again, that is not inherently problematical, and I suspect this may say more about my poetry habits lately than any flaw of execution in the material.
Will read (again) soon. So should you.
On a first read, this felt a little thematically unmoored - the language here is precise in its abstraction, shifting modes within individual poems often and certainly from one to the next, and that makes for a demanding collection. Recalibration is essential to following Xie's thinking here, and perhaps due to the styles of poetry I've been reading lately (largely conceptual, often with broadly-defined thematics), this demanded constant care from me as a reader. I wanted to effortlessly and organically pivot alongside the material, but I found myself needing to orient far more than usual. Again, that is not inherently problematical, and I suspect this may say more about my poetry habits lately than any flaw of execution in the material.
Will read (again) soon. So should you.
March 22, 2019
Jenny Xie shines in this brilliant, pensive, meditative collection. Each poem challenges the reader to question their perspectives on time, place, and the self. Xie writes of her travels, particularly about feeling out of place in various cultures and locations. As an immigrant to the United States, she shares how difficult and "ill-fitting" assimilation is. Xie also imparts wisdom that she learned from Buddhist practices, including living in the present, while acknowledging that it is no easy feat to let go of the weight of the past. Throughout the collection, she observes different cultures, people, and locations while pondering the self and its connection to it all.
While I don't believe I will fully grasp this work until giving it several more reads, Xie's honest ponderings about life, loneliness, and even mental health issues like depression were searing and life-changing. They made me feel not alone.
Favorite poems: Naturalization, Visual Orders, and Ongoing (but you should certainly read the entire collection)
While I don't believe I will fully grasp this work until giving it several more reads, Xie's honest ponderings about life, loneliness, and even mental health issues like depression were searing and life-changing. They made me feel not alone.
Favorite poems: Naturalization, Visual Orders, and Ongoing (but you should certainly read the entire collection)
December 2, 2018
This is the third poetry collection I have read from this years National Book Award finalists. I am open and ready for criticism and correction of my low rating. I struggled to connect with most of these poems. It's not that there aren't elements to admire. They are clearly pursuing a deeply personal reflection of the author's travels to places both literal and metaphorical. Individual lines jump out with arresting imagery. However, for the most part, I struggled to find the threads that would help these images add up to something more than a series of seemingly random free associations. Some poems did hang together enough to give me sense of their purpose, and the suite of poems called "Visual Orders" stood out for me as a powerfully insightful reflection of a life attuned to experiencing life through sight. But as a whole this collection was disappointing and not one I can personally recommend.
October 5, 2018
At the surface, Jenny Xie’s EYE LEVEL seems like a poetic travelogue. (Many of her pieces focus on her experiences abroad.) But Xie, who was born in China and raised in the U.S., goes much deeper than that. Her poems touch not just on geography, culture, and immigration, but also on solitude, identity, and belonging – or, rather, the lack of feeling like you belong. Her “poetic voice” is spare and nuanced, yet thrumming with aptly chosen sensory details so that the reader’s mental picture of each physical space and Xie’s inner questions are sharp and clear. The journey she takes you on doesn’t necessarily offer answers to those questions. However, that searching quality makes the feelings, images, and insights that Xie shares all the more moving in the end.
You might like EYE LEVEL if… you’re drawn to pensive, perceptive poetry that focuses on one’s outer and inner worlds.
You might like EYE LEVEL if… you’re drawn to pensive, perceptive poetry that focuses on one’s outer and inner worlds.
June 25, 2018
Xie took me on a visual journey through her poems. There is a flow, a kind of "bounce", to the sparse yet direct style of "Eye Level". I found myself enjoying the first half more than the second, but that is largely because I loved the way Xie wrote about the city, about people and culture and the issue of belonging. She drew me into her poems and I found it very easy to visualize and get lost in the sensations the poems conjured. This was less the case in the second half, which felt more like meditations or internal musings, like the speaker was going on an internal journey and bringing the reader with them. "Eye Level" is a wonderful surprise and a beautiful debut, one that wins its reader over with how unguarded it is. Reading it feels like you're having a conversation - with the poems, with the speaker, with the poet, and with yourself.
March 21, 2018
Jennie Xie’s debut operates in achingly pleasurable dualities— the solitary and the universal, the stranger and the heart, the tender and the stark. In poems that take us from Sapa to Corfu to Hefei, we find ourselves at once traversing the globe and "tunneling inward." It is a collection of landscapes, both geographical and psychological— and Eye Level explores what it means to pass through them, never quite settling. Even while she speaks of aloneness, of “endless conversations with no listener,” Xie’s masterful sense of sonic texture— a grasp of music and rhythm that lures the grief and apathy into something fine as a needle, that opens us up and then stitches us back together again— offers a tenderness we’ll want to witness, over and over.
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