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Oculus: Poems
A brilliant second collection by Sally Wen Mao on the violence of the spectacle—starring the film legend Anna May Wong
In Oculus, Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. The title poem follows a nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence spanning the collection speaks in the voice of the international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.
In Oculus, Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. The title poem follows a nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence spanning the collection speaks in the voice of the international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.
119 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2019
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About the author
Sally Wen Mao
11 books157 followersSally Wen Mao is the author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kinereth Gensler Award. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013 and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She has a forthcoming book, Oculus, out from Graywolf Press in 2019.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
February 7, 2019
As the title implies, these poems focus on the voyeuristic tendencies of humans. Watching of girls and women, particularly Asian women, as entertainment. Many center around the 1930s actress Anna May Wong. Maybe this focus detracted from the structure of the collection as it started to seem repetitive. Mao is clearly a poet of great talent, but the overall collection left me without a strong impression of like or dislike.
July 19, 2019
4.5
Sally Wen Mao absolutely hits it out of the park with Oculus. It’s definitely my favorite collection of poetry I’ve read this year, even edging out American Primitive by my beloved Mary Oliver. Mao takes us on an odyssey from past to present to speculative sci-fi future and you’ll want to be there for the ride. Much like what Morgan Parker does with her experience as a black woman, Mao turns a looking glass onto her experience as an Asian American woman. Through various lenses--social media, cinema, technology--we get enlightening observations on how Asian American women see themselves and how others see and control and Other them, especially as entertainment.
A main character in this saga is Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, who came to prominence in the 1920s and ’30s. (I first encountered Wong with 1932’s Shanghai Express, where she starred alongside Marlene Dietrich.) Mao inhabits Wong to illustrate just how difficult it was for Asian American actors to work out of and above their typecast, and how ridiculously often white actors were—and still are—cast in Asian roles. Yes, we’re all looking at you Mickey Rooney and ScarJo. Because of Wong’s demand for better roles, she was cast out from Hollywood and unfortunately passed away before she was meant to make her big return in the film adaptation of Flower Drum Song (1961), which was the first Hollywood film to feature an (almost) all-Asian cast. It was fascinating and heart-wrenching to have these fictionalized scenarios with Wong.
I rarely gush about books, but this is honestly so, so good. It’s right up there with My Year of Rest and Relaxation as one of my favorite reads of the year. I think readers will gain so much from this collection, and I infinitely thank Sally Wen Mao for this poetry. Go read this.
Sally Wen Mao absolutely hits it out of the park with Oculus. It’s definitely my favorite collection of poetry I’ve read this year, even edging out American Primitive by my beloved Mary Oliver. Mao takes us on an odyssey from past to present to speculative sci-fi future and you’ll want to be there for the ride. Much like what Morgan Parker does with her experience as a black woman, Mao turns a looking glass onto her experience as an Asian American woman. Through various lenses--social media, cinema, technology--we get enlightening observations on how Asian American women see themselves and how others see and control and Other them, especially as entertainment.
A main character in this saga is Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, who came to prominence in the 1920s and ’30s. (I first encountered Wong with 1932’s Shanghai Express, where she starred alongside Marlene Dietrich.) Mao inhabits Wong to illustrate just how difficult it was for Asian American actors to work out of and above their typecast, and how ridiculously often white actors were—and still are—cast in Asian roles. Yes, we’re all looking at you Mickey Rooney and ScarJo. Because of Wong’s demand for better roles, she was cast out from Hollywood and unfortunately passed away before she was meant to make her big return in the film adaptation of Flower Drum Song (1961), which was the first Hollywood film to feature an (almost) all-Asian cast. It was fascinating and heart-wrenching to have these fictionalized scenarios with Wong.
I rarely gush about books, but this is honestly so, so good. It’s right up there with My Year of Rest and Relaxation as one of my favorite reads of the year. I think readers will gain so much from this collection, and I infinitely thank Sally Wen Mao for this poetry. Go read this.
September 7, 2019
I've been waiting years for this book to come out. It's one of the most thematically cohesive poetry collections around: these are poems largely about voyeurism, about how our desire to look into other people's lives can veer into pretty morbid territory sometimes, especially when differences in gender and race tint the lens through which we gaze, and how this becomes especially complicated in our modern era with its advanced technology (webcams, etc.). The heart of the collection is a series of a dozen poems written in the voice of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star: these poems explore Wong's frustration at being relegated to second-tier, racially stereotyped roles in a whitewashed Hollywood; furthermore, exhibiting the best tendencies of speculative poetry, these poems imagine what would happen if Wong had a time machine that allowed her to travel to the future, to meet and commune with kindred spirits Josephine Baker and Bruce Lee, to comment wryly and wistfully on the persistent racial inequities present in the movie industry today. The language here is often gorgeously romantic in its unfulfilled yearning, especially in the poems' masterful endings: "When the show is over, / the applause is meant for stars / but my ovation is for the shadows"; "I've never cared for love stories. / I praise a story of heartbreak. I praise / how beauty looks during a blackout"; "We had to prove / ourselves different...for what? In the end, we still pined for shelter. / In the end, we still guarded our bones against the blaring thunder."
Wong's story is juxtaposed with other instances in history where Asian Americans were subjected to a harsh and prejudiced gaze: e.g., the story of Afong Moy, the first Chinese immigrant to the U.S., who was placed in a box so that the curious public could buy tickets to gawk at her. In this multi-part poem, as elsewhere in the book, the complicity of the medical community is indicted, among other things:
They wanted
to see my feet uncovered, can you believe
the nerve? The podiatrists, the reporters, begged
for a glimpse. At the men, I snickered.
At the women, I smiled. They swooned, blushed,
as if they swallowed Sichuan peppercorns.
Their corsets were killing them.
The racial politics that shaped Moy's life are dissected in all their nuance and complexity, a testament to the intensive research that must have undergirded the writing of these poems:
[P.T. Barnum] questioned whether I'd ever
been a Lady. Brought another family of Celestials,
advertised their veracity to discredit me.
As if there couldn't be two respectable Chinese ladies
in America at the same time. To promote
one, strip the dignity of the other. There was no word
for tokenism in those days of yore.
Other examples of problematic voyeurism explored in this book include more recent incidents, such as the 2012 case of Korean American father Ki-Suk Han, a photograph of whose horrifying death (he was pushed in front of an oncoming subway train) was blazoned on the front page of the New York Post. Reading this news story at the time it happened had a big psychological impact on me, so I felt a bit of consolation at seeing it addressed in verse: "Lately, I can't go underground without shielding / my body with my hands...." Another recent controversy addressed is that of Bodies: The Exhibition: "Their / mouths are blood diamonds," Mao writes, humanizing the Chinese men (rumored to have included executed dissidents) whose dissected and plastinated bodies comprise the exhibition. "Sir...your shorn life passes through me / in one thrush. Boy who flunked his college // entrance exams. Man who ate abalone / from the can...."
This is dark stuff, but the book surprised me by ending on a hopeful note: people put down their cell phones for a while and find true human connection again; the Asian American poet-speaker sees Anna May Wong's face on a poster and feels connected to the city around her despite all the obstacles: "if I can recognize / her face,...then I am not a stranger here."
Wong's story is juxtaposed with other instances in history where Asian Americans were subjected to a harsh and prejudiced gaze: e.g., the story of Afong Moy, the first Chinese immigrant to the U.S., who was placed in a box so that the curious public could buy tickets to gawk at her. In this multi-part poem, as elsewhere in the book, the complicity of the medical community is indicted, among other things:
They wanted
to see my feet uncovered, can you believe
the nerve? The podiatrists, the reporters, begged
for a glimpse. At the men, I snickered.
At the women, I smiled. They swooned, blushed,
as if they swallowed Sichuan peppercorns.
Their corsets were killing them.
The racial politics that shaped Moy's life are dissected in all their nuance and complexity, a testament to the intensive research that must have undergirded the writing of these poems:
[P.T. Barnum] questioned whether I'd ever
been a Lady. Brought another family of Celestials,
advertised their veracity to discredit me.
As if there couldn't be two respectable Chinese ladies
in America at the same time. To promote
one, strip the dignity of the other. There was no word
for tokenism in those days of yore.
Other examples of problematic voyeurism explored in this book include more recent incidents, such as the 2012 case of Korean American father Ki-Suk Han, a photograph of whose horrifying death (he was pushed in front of an oncoming subway train) was blazoned on the front page of the New York Post. Reading this news story at the time it happened had a big psychological impact on me, so I felt a bit of consolation at seeing it addressed in verse: "Lately, I can't go underground without shielding / my body with my hands...." Another recent controversy addressed is that of Bodies: The Exhibition: "Their / mouths are blood diamonds," Mao writes, humanizing the Chinese men (rumored to have included executed dissidents) whose dissected and plastinated bodies comprise the exhibition. "Sir...your shorn life passes through me / in one thrush. Boy who flunked his college // entrance exams. Man who ate abalone / from the can...."
This is dark stuff, but the book surprised me by ending on a hopeful note: people put down their cell phones for a while and find true human connection again; the Asian American poet-speaker sees Anna May Wong's face on a poster and feels connected to the city around her despite all the obstacles: "if I can recognize / her face,...then I am not a stranger here."
April 9, 2019
I read Anne Cheng's Ornamentalism (well not the whole book but the essay where she introduces the idea) shortly before picking up Oculus. Cheng has an epigraph in the book, quoted from Second Skin. In Ornamentalism (in super rough terms), Cheng posits that the yellow woman experiences a particular type of objectification, objectification as ornament -- an aesthetic, synthetic object, as opposed to something fleshy, seductive, nurturing. The most exciting thing for me is that she says that this might not be wrong, in that we are all synthetic, robotic, our identities fused with the machines we depend on. The yellow woman can triumph in her representation as ornament by using her status to expose how everyone shares her lot. Whether these sorts of relationships with machines are good or bad is I think ambiguous, and case-by-case. But the potential for an optimistic, empowering reading of this -- hot cyborg Asian woman blasting off into space -- is super exciting for me.
The title, Oculus, seems to refer to the collection's interest in how the Western world looks at Asian celebrities, how this gaze is mediated by technology. Mao is very critical of orientalism and adamant (if somewhat pessimistic) about rewriting representations of Asians on our own terms: in "Occidentalism," she writes, "One day, / a girl like me may come across [hegemony] on a shelf/ … And I won't be there to protect / her, to cross out the text and say: go ahead -- / rewrite this"; in the series of persona poems imagining Anna May Wong time traveling, she both explores a freer future for the stereotyped star and laments what has been done to her, what has continued to be done to those like her. Mao often seems similarly critical of technology for how it enables this sort of fetishization/dehumanization of celebrity. I loved, and was disturbed by, the first of two poems titled "Oculus" (the latter is much more positive, more on this later) about a Shanghai teen who Instagram lived her suicide in 2014: "She wiped her lens / before she died. The smudge still lives. / I saw it singe the edge of her bed. / Soon it swallowed the whole burning city."
All the writing in this collection is incredible. The words carefully chosen, often robotic/scientific for thematic resonance, but also musical -- it's crazy the play Mao does with abstruse, Latin-y terms like "haptic," "schisms," "clavicles" ("Teledildonics"); "epithetic" (the amazing and uniquely premised "The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Voice Girl"). So yeah, this is a very good collection. But I think I'll focus this review specifically on what excited me about Anne Cheng, the idea that technology -- or specifically, ornamentalism, technorientalism -- is maybe not a bad thing, when it's used/fused on marginalized people's own terms. I'm interested in this hopefulness more than the more familiar criticisms of orientalism/technology-enabled fetishization, as well done as they are. Poems like "Anna May Wong Goes Viral," which ends with Wong ditching the technological for the natural ("I replace the paillettes / on my gowns with scales / … Soon a crop of young girls will join me, / renouncing their dresses to wade / in the thrill of being animal") feel a bit simplistic for their simple technology = bad / natural = good equivalencies. Same with the other "Oculus," about a camera-free performance Solange gave at the Guggenheim; the poem frames the camera-free-ness of it as desirable, natural, springy, invoking "peonies" and "cherry petals," etc. while I feel nothing but resentment for having not gotten the invite lol. Others like "Ghost in the Shell," critiquing the film's casting, dress thinkpiece-y gotchas in poetic language. These are poems that I feel like white people will read and be like ooh, she called me out, chills, this is so good, but to my jaded self, they don't give me what I want: a new perspective; hope, maybe.
The most moving poems in the book for me are when Mao engages with other Asian artists -- Wong Kar Wai, Satoshi Kon, Nam June Paik, a unique and playful exploration of a fusion/romance between Tang poet Li Po and Janelle Monae. In these poems, especially the Kon and Paik ones, Mao considers how technology, employed by Asian artists, can bad/alienating but also liberating, beautiful, empathetic. This is suggested in the lovely "Close Encounters of the Liminal Kind" too, about the lonely but communal experience of riding overnight trains in China: "This is a city / full of sensors. They detect / the shapes of hips and mouths. / There is heat at the center of it." We are Asians, we are robots, the fact of this is irrelevant to Western representations of us as ornament/technological, we are beautiful passionate robots mmmm.
Last note: I have never read a collection that felt so cohesive. Mao structures her book with interludes of fantastical Anna May Wong persona poems, and concludes with the grounded poem "Resurrection" about the speaker encountering Wong's image in NYC subway ads, understanding that "if I can recognize / her face under this tunnel of endless shadows / … then I am not a stranger here." I was floored by how beautifully this tied together the disparate sections, and the themes of persona and realism, history and present, pain and solidarity.
Wow I am really proud of this review, someone should have paid me for this!!!
The title, Oculus, seems to refer to the collection's interest in how the Western world looks at Asian celebrities, how this gaze is mediated by technology. Mao is very critical of orientalism and adamant (if somewhat pessimistic) about rewriting representations of Asians on our own terms: in "Occidentalism," she writes, "One day, / a girl like me may come across [hegemony] on a shelf/ … And I won't be there to protect / her, to cross out the text and say: go ahead -- / rewrite this"; in the series of persona poems imagining Anna May Wong time traveling, she both explores a freer future for the stereotyped star and laments what has been done to her, what has continued to be done to those like her. Mao often seems similarly critical of technology for how it enables this sort of fetishization/dehumanization of celebrity. I loved, and was disturbed by, the first of two poems titled "Oculus" (the latter is much more positive, more on this later) about a Shanghai teen who Instagram lived her suicide in 2014: "She wiped her lens / before she died. The smudge still lives. / I saw it singe the edge of her bed. / Soon it swallowed the whole burning city."
All the writing in this collection is incredible. The words carefully chosen, often robotic/scientific for thematic resonance, but also musical -- it's crazy the play Mao does with abstruse, Latin-y terms like "haptic," "schisms," "clavicles" ("Teledildonics"); "epithetic" (the amazing and uniquely premised "The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Voice Girl"). So yeah, this is a very good collection. But I think I'll focus this review specifically on what excited me about Anne Cheng, the idea that technology -- or specifically, ornamentalism, technorientalism -- is maybe not a bad thing, when it's used/fused on marginalized people's own terms. I'm interested in this hopefulness more than the more familiar criticisms of orientalism/technology-enabled fetishization, as well done as they are. Poems like "Anna May Wong Goes Viral," which ends with Wong ditching the technological for the natural ("I replace the paillettes / on my gowns with scales / … Soon a crop of young girls will join me, / renouncing their dresses to wade / in the thrill of being animal") feel a bit simplistic for their simple technology = bad / natural = good equivalencies. Same with the other "Oculus," about a camera-free performance Solange gave at the Guggenheim; the poem frames the camera-free-ness of it as desirable, natural, springy, invoking "peonies" and "cherry petals," etc. while I feel nothing but resentment for having not gotten the invite lol. Others like "Ghost in the Shell," critiquing the film's casting, dress thinkpiece-y gotchas in poetic language. These are poems that I feel like white people will read and be like ooh, she called me out, chills, this is so good, but to my jaded self, they don't give me what I want: a new perspective; hope, maybe.
The most moving poems in the book for me are when Mao engages with other Asian artists -- Wong Kar Wai, Satoshi Kon, Nam June Paik, a unique and playful exploration of a fusion/romance between Tang poet Li Po and Janelle Monae. In these poems, especially the Kon and Paik ones, Mao considers how technology, employed by Asian artists, can bad/alienating but also liberating, beautiful, empathetic. This is suggested in the lovely "Close Encounters of the Liminal Kind" too, about the lonely but communal experience of riding overnight trains in China: "This is a city / full of sensors. They detect / the shapes of hips and mouths. / There is heat at the center of it." We are Asians, we are robots, the fact of this is irrelevant to Western representations of us as ornament/technological, we are beautiful passionate robots mmmm.
Last note: I have never read a collection that felt so cohesive. Mao structures her book with interludes of fantastical Anna May Wong persona poems, and concludes with the grounded poem "Resurrection" about the speaker encountering Wong's image in NYC subway ads, understanding that "if I can recognize / her face under this tunnel of endless shadows / … then I am not a stranger here." I was floored by how beautifully this tied together the disparate sections, and the themes of persona and realism, history and present, pain and solidarity.
Wow I am really proud of this review, someone should have paid me for this!!!
Read
December 27, 2023What is it / about the stage lights that casts our bodies both desirable / and diabolical?
Upon finishing this book, I was left feeling slightly empty, and I believed it to be a result of dissatisfaction with the poems. But the more I think about this poetry collection, the more I am able to glean from it and appreciate Mao’s writing. I recognize now that that emptiness was more reflective of a need to sit with all the themes she wrote about and let them fully sink in.
These poems tackle voyeurism and its intersection with identity, looking at it through the lenses of technology, cinema, pop culture, and more. Particularly, Mao focuses on the Asian (American) woman’s experience of alienation through others’ spectacularization of (and her own performance of) her identity. I loved many pieces throughout the collection, and I loved how she mixed poems on “general” subjects with more specific people and examples throughout history, such as Anna May Wong, Afong Moy, and a Shanghainese girl who uploaded her suicide to Instagram. I can’t wait to read more from Mao; her use of imagery is beautiful and brutal.
Save / us, save us, save us—if our suffering / is broadcasted, let it be known. / Let it be collective. Let it be real, let it be / the future real soon.
April 11, 2019
This collection is so god damn smart and speculative, a well-researched commentary on technology and Asian futurism and identity and the portrayal and treatment of Asian women and Asian characters in film. I don't typically love a lot of notes in poetry books, but I was really excited to flip back and read the notes on each poem. Well thought out and put together thematically, and each poem is thought-provoking in the subject it deconstructs. Also, that cover is badass.
January 19, 2020
I will admit, there was a lot here that went right over my head, but what I did get was amazing. Her use of fragmented imagery kept me on my toes and painted a surrealist dreamscape in my head filled with history, representation, and digital surveillance. These poems weren’t always the easiest for me to connect to, but Sally Wen Mao’s skill is evident.
June 12, 2019
In Oculus , Sally Wen Mao blends pop culture and technology to question viewpoints — how we reveal ourselves, how we see each other, and the power structures involved in who is telling the story and who doing the viewing. All the poems in this collection are fantastic, but I was particularly enamored with a series of poems written within the perspective of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, who time travels her way through the history and future of cinema. Through the eyes of Wong, Mao is able to examine the portrayals of Asian characters in movies, from Bruce Lee to Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sixteen Candles. I love the way she explores representation throughout this book, which is probably one of my favorite poetry reads thus far in 2019.
I had a great conversation with Mao on the New Books in Poetry podcast about her process of writing this book and discussing the ways poetry can reclaim point-of-view and stories.
I had a great conversation with Mao on the New Books in Poetry podcast about her process of writing this book and discussing the ways poetry can reclaim point-of-view and stories.
September 26, 2019
This book took me out back and beat me up in an alley with its beauty and mystery and truth and then it kicked me out into the world, leaving me squinting and seeing things in a whole new perspective. Mao weaves themes of history, women of color's experiences, and technology throughout this book. Also, personally, I enjoyed the mix between poems that I "got" right away and ones that I had to puzzle over. Mao's way with language gives you glimpses into the future through the way of the present and the past. I was continually surprised and delighted by these poems. When I'm old and rich, this book will be on my shelf. A favorite: "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles"
January 26, 2019
Sally Wen Mao’s poetry is both complex and relatable. It’s a collection of beautifully written, well researched, thought provoking poems. Social media, pop culture, voyeurism, race, history, technology, performance, Hollywood. Each poem is complete, many quite powerful, but taken together the collection reveals so much more.
January 21, 2022
C/W:
Oculus was a moving collection of poetry with lots of quick turns-of-phrase that made this such an enjoyable read. The topics spanned from Anna May Wong to belonging to technology. I look forward to reading more of Sally Wen Mao's work.
Oculus was a moving collection of poetry with lots of quick turns-of-phrase that made this such an enjoyable read. The topics spanned from Anna May Wong to belonging to technology. I look forward to reading more of Sally Wen Mao's work.
March 6, 2022
A thought-provoking collection of poems on the violence of voyeurism through technology (social media, pop culture, performance) and how race and gender can tint the lens through which we gaze.
July 14, 2022
Darlings, let’s rewrite
the script.
Let’s hijack the narrative, steer
the story ourselves. There’d be a heist, a battle.
this was a remarkable poetry collection! :)
the script.
Let’s hijack the narrative, steer
the story ourselves. There’d be a heist, a battle.
this was a remarkable poetry collection! :)
November 12, 2024
Challenging and precise, the poems in Oculus draw on a multitude of cultural references to explore technology, gender, capital, futurism, and Asian/Asian-American identity. From Anna May Wong to a variety of films with Asian themes to Pokémon (the devastating poem “Lavender Town”) - I wasn’t familiar with all of the references, but I was interested in them, and enjoyed reading and re-reading the poems over a couple of months, sometimes on the subway, sometimes at home, looking up what they were referring to and thinking about their contents.
Here’s “Electronic Necropolis,” set in Guiyu Village, which specializes in mining and recycling electronic waste.
Behold how I tend to disappearance.
By slicing open dead circuit boards,
I cultivate rebirth. I douse
the hardware in pyretic acids
before it scrapes me, enters me, a lather of data
against my organs, bless them,
my warring insides. Even when the sun
half-drowns inside the black digital water,
its copper yoke doesn’t reflect.
It is these nights that I get apprehensive:
the hard drives I’d gutted incant like ghosts -
oracular fossils that dream up other lives
as my family ails quiet over bitter melon soup.
Past supper we play cards, gamble away our scraps,
our sleep still short-circuiting.
In the lagoon a fish swims by, its scales
shooting jets of bitumen.
Amazing, such captivity; I can’t help
marveling, as if I were on a plane going away
from Hong Kong, watching the city dismantle
beneath the fuselage - glowing, dying
circuit, ember half-faded into the skinless clouds.
What might - to shatter a microchip
with a pricked thumb. We unsolder our duress
with wire splinters, all lodged in our flesh
as if powering us. By noon, the megalomaniac
sun smiles down at the skinned machines.
It is the defects that incandesce, that supply
us with food, music, harm. The Lianjiang
River flows onward, north, toward the purple
rusk, the limestone cliffs. Under its water
skein, find the sum of foreign
dross. Riven, rising: a bloodless organ.
Here’s “Electronic Necropolis,” set in Guiyu Village, which specializes in mining and recycling electronic waste.
Behold how I tend to disappearance.
By slicing open dead circuit boards,
I cultivate rebirth. I douse
the hardware in pyretic acids
before it scrapes me, enters me, a lather of data
against my organs, bless them,
my warring insides. Even when the sun
half-drowns inside the black digital water,
its copper yoke doesn’t reflect.
It is these nights that I get apprehensive:
the hard drives I’d gutted incant like ghosts -
oracular fossils that dream up other lives
as my family ails quiet over bitter melon soup.
Past supper we play cards, gamble away our scraps,
our sleep still short-circuiting.
In the lagoon a fish swims by, its scales
shooting jets of bitumen.
Amazing, such captivity; I can’t help
marveling, as if I were on a plane going away
from Hong Kong, watching the city dismantle
beneath the fuselage - glowing, dying
circuit, ember half-faded into the skinless clouds.
What might - to shatter a microchip
with a pricked thumb. We unsolder our duress
with wire splinters, all lodged in our flesh
as if powering us. By noon, the megalomaniac
sun smiles down at the skinned machines.
It is the defects that incandesce, that supply
us with food, music, harm. The Lianjiang
River flows onward, north, toward the purple
rusk, the limestone cliffs. Under its water
skein, find the sum of foreign
dross. Riven, rising: a bloodless organ.
June 16, 2019
This was a random library find, and very good.
Many of these poems were interrogating Asian stereotypes in American media.
Many of these poems were interrogating Asian stereotypes in American media.
May 27, 2019
How easy
it is, to shatter chinoiserie, like the Han
dynasty urn Ai Weiwei dropped in 1995.
If only recovering the silenced history
is as simple as smashing its container: book,
bowl, celadon spoon. Such objects cross
borders the way our bodies never could.
Instead, we’re left with history, its blonde
dust. That bowl is unbreakable. All its ghosts
still shudder through us like small breaths.
From the poem Occidentalism
This is one of the best poetry collections I've ever read. Intelligent and hard-hitting, Sally Wen Mao's poems cut close to the bone as she explores the Asian and, predominantly, female experience in the West, and the ripple effect that past has on the present as well as on the future. There are so many themes and topics that she is exploring here but she never allows the collection to become congested or for one subject to domineer and smother others--it's perfectly balanced and executed.
This is one of those books where I couldn't resist making notes...there were so many references in here to things I knew nothing about, such as the photographs of Ai Weiwei smashing of the Han Dynasty urn mentioned in the extract above, and what that signified. I loved learning more but it was also a painful process because it is not a pleasant history and, at times, I felt drenched in shame that I didn't know some of these things or they had simply never crossed my mind as a privileged white reader. The life of actress Anna May Wong I found deeply upsetting despite the poems in which she featured being amazing and beautifully written.
I'm kind of at a loss for words on this one. I think it's flawless and amazing and I could easily just gush about it here...but I won't.
it is, to shatter chinoiserie, like the Han
dynasty urn Ai Weiwei dropped in 1995.
If only recovering the silenced history
is as simple as smashing its container: book,
bowl, celadon spoon. Such objects cross
borders the way our bodies never could.
Instead, we’re left with history, its blonde
dust. That bowl is unbreakable. All its ghosts
still shudder through us like small breaths.
From the poem Occidentalism
This is one of the best poetry collections I've ever read. Intelligent and hard-hitting, Sally Wen Mao's poems cut close to the bone as she explores the Asian and, predominantly, female experience in the West, and the ripple effect that past has on the present as well as on the future. There are so many themes and topics that she is exploring here but she never allows the collection to become congested or for one subject to domineer and smother others--it's perfectly balanced and executed.
This is one of those books where I couldn't resist making notes...there were so many references in here to things I knew nothing about, such as the photographs of Ai Weiwei smashing of the Han Dynasty urn mentioned in the extract above, and what that signified. I loved learning more but it was also a painful process because it is not a pleasant history and, at times, I felt drenched in shame that I didn't know some of these things or they had simply never crossed my mind as a privileged white reader. The life of actress Anna May Wong I found deeply upsetting despite the poems in which she featured being amazing and beautifully written.
I'm kind of at a loss for words on this one. I think it's flawless and amazing and I could easily just gush about it here...but I won't.
June 3, 2021
What this poetry collection does so well throughout the whole thing is portray the unique sense of urban / technological alienization in a way I've never read before. Sally Wen Mao also connects this feeling to experienced of being a racial minority and the solidarity that forms with other racial minorities. And the compositions were all immaculate, all amazing. A lot of words to say that this is So good.
October 13, 2022
I cannot recommend this collection enough. holy moly. I was literally near tears several times throughout the book. the narrative style and trajectory, the source materials drawn on, the voice, the EVERYTHING .... I am in love with Sally Wen Mao's work and all of her stories and lives that she lives in them. 10/10 recommend. my words are jumbled and messy right now (won't be in my thesis) BUT tl;dr everyone read this, it's so utterly beautiful in every heart-aching way.
August 19, 2020
rip daul kim
need to give this another read-through. chilling, playful, intimate.
need to give this another read-through. chilling, playful, intimate.
March 3, 2020
I'm so hungry I gnaw at light. / It tunnels from the shadows, an exhausting / hope. (109)
Motifs of cinema, electronics, futurism, suicides, silenced voices and communities, fame, land and travel. A beautiful collection, I could have spent hours more reading the pages.
All a ghost wants is to be chained / to a place, to someone who can't forget / her. (5)
Favourites of mine:
Occidentalism
Teledildonics
Mutant Odalisque
Provenance: A Vivisection
Antipode Essay
Electronic Motherland
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
Lavender Town
After Nam June Paik
Motifs of cinema, electronics, futurism, suicides, silenced voices and communities, fame, land and travel. A beautiful collection, I could have spent hours more reading the pages.
All a ghost wants is to be chained / to a place, to someone who can't forget / her. (5)
Favourites of mine:
Occidentalism
Teledildonics
Mutant Odalisque
Provenance: A Vivisection
Antipode Essay
I don't blame / the ocean for / gorging in flotsam, / or eating people / alive. (44)Close Encounters of the Liminal Kind
Electronic Motherland
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
This land promises snowfall. This land promises windfall. / This land promises the return of brief days. May this land / promise you a body, some muscle, some organ, a brain. (59)Anna May Wong Makes Cameos
Lavender Town
After Nam June Paik
My robot, my poet, ancient and erstwhile and now / and f—ever, / the best mischief: to be stranded in this electricity with you. (100)Oculus
August 24, 2019
Diaspora, racism, xenophobia. A unique experience by Chinese women and Chinese American women, a suffering of stereotypes, misogyny, and a history of prejudice and oppression. A heart wrenching and illuminating collection that shares an experience non-Chinese/Chinese Americans and non-Asian Americans could not truly understand. As a Jew, I've been well aware of my own experiences with stereotypes in media, how Jews in history were treated. I was able to sympathize and with some of these poems but there are still so many unique experiences that need to be shared.
On a composition note, I greatly enjoyed the variety of poetry styles and her use of different styles such as abstract poetry and how it conveyed raw feeling while more traditional styles told narratives. There was so much passion and emotion in all of her poems.
The best summary is her quote in the acknowledgements: "I wrote this book for women of color. Without you, the world isn't possible. Because of you, I keep going. I have learned this the hard way: you matter, and don't let anyone or anything convince you otherwise."
On a composition note, I greatly enjoyed the variety of poetry styles and her use of different styles such as abstract poetry and how it conveyed raw feeling while more traditional styles told narratives. There was so much passion and emotion in all of her poems.
The best summary is her quote in the acknowledgements: "I wrote this book for women of color. Without you, the world isn't possible. Because of you, I keep going. I have learned this the hard way: you matter, and don't let anyone or anything convince you otherwise."
April 12, 2019
I loved the conceit of this, with Anna May Wong traveling through time to notice that our culture's treatment of Asian actors and Asian characters hasn't changed pretty much at all since her day. Sometimes it seemed to dive a little too far into the "Overwrought Deep Poetry" field for my liking--I prefer to keep things wry, which this collection did often but not throughout. But I actually thought the most beautiful poem in the collection was "Lavender Town"--which, yes, is absolutely about the town in Pokemon, deal with it.
July 2, 2019
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the art being created in this book of poems. For me, the poems hit close to home in two ways: 1) having similar cultural ties & 2) seeing my own writing growing to have a similar style to Mao’s
I absolutely loved the juxtaposition of poems together stylistically as well as stand alone pieces. I borrowed this book from my public library but I’m excited to purchase my own copy.
*will edit to add some of my favorite lines*
I absolutely loved the juxtaposition of poems together stylistically as well as stand alone pieces. I borrowed this book from my public library but I’m excited to purchase my own copy.
*will edit to add some of my favorite lines*
March 17, 2019
This collection took me all over the place and back & forth in time. Such a vehicle for adventure and exploration, capturing certain periods with concision and colour. I loved this so much for the sense of wonder tingled with intelligent curiosity that it invoked in me
July 3, 2022
I'm in love with this collection. Each eye opening piece sings of experience. Vivid imagery, tragic history, past, present, we need these poems now. Sally Wen Mao is a voice you won't want out of your head. I highly recommend this poet. Easily my favorite poetry collection of this year.
July 26, 2023
new poetry from sally wen mao in four days 😍😍😍😍😍😍 hoping it lives up to the beauty that is oculus
Read
January 21, 2023this was pretty okay! i think it felt probably well-constructed and clearly well-researched, but maybe lacking in emotion or impact to me?
this series of poems is primarily about asian women and being Seen in a large cultural way -- film, paparazzi, audiences, in the news. the poems are v much trucking in film history, including recent stuff like Cloud Atlas, inevitably blade runner, and a lot of poems about anna may wong. these poems tend to be about being pigeonholed as classic asian stereotypes or about white actors playing asian roles. there are also i think three poems about suicides of young asian celebrities, a model and two actresses, after intense paparazzi scrutiny.
ultimately its partial a me-bias, in that i think for me complaining about asian representation (mis-representation) in media is just kind of boring? or maybe has been co-opted in a way that feels ridiculous, like rich cozy coastal asians who've never experienced being pigeon-holed as dragon-ladies or submissive concubines and frankly never will getting weirdly uppity about it even as like, we have crazy rich asians and simu liu and other indicators that asians (lightskinned, esp. chinese, esp east asians) have simply been fully assimilated into the milquetoast upper middle class liberal machine that's gentrifying the shit out of everything and is scared of black and poor people n shit. so poems about that didn't really hit. i'm not saying they *couldn't* have hit, especially all these poems about anna may wong and her cultural and historical context, and connecting her to later media representation like bruce lee. but i don't think Mao pulled it off. it just didn't hit a resonant point for me. idk, maybe i'm not oppressed enough culturally.
i wish the poems about playing a part; being a celebrity and an Asian Woman tm and how the media will ruin your sense of self etc; had more pathos in them. but maybe i'm just not smart enough for how cerebrally constructed these poems were. admittedly they were notably un-lyrical or pretty to me; and maybe i just need a little extra sugar on top for these sorts of things.
still, good, thinky, probs, just not for me
this series of poems is primarily about asian women and being Seen in a large cultural way -- film, paparazzi, audiences, in the news. the poems are v much trucking in film history, including recent stuff like Cloud Atlas, inevitably blade runner, and a lot of poems about anna may wong. these poems tend to be about being pigeonholed as classic asian stereotypes or about white actors playing asian roles. there are also i think three poems about suicides of young asian celebrities, a model and two actresses, after intense paparazzi scrutiny.
ultimately its partial a me-bias, in that i think for me complaining about asian representation (mis-representation) in media is just kind of boring? or maybe has been co-opted in a way that feels ridiculous, like rich cozy coastal asians who've never experienced being pigeon-holed as dragon-ladies or submissive concubines and frankly never will getting weirdly uppity about it even as like, we have crazy rich asians and simu liu and other indicators that asians (lightskinned, esp. chinese, esp east asians) have simply been fully assimilated into the milquetoast upper middle class liberal machine that's gentrifying the shit out of everything and is scared of black and poor people n shit. so poems about that didn't really hit. i'm not saying they *couldn't* have hit, especially all these poems about anna may wong and her cultural and historical context, and connecting her to later media representation like bruce lee. but i don't think Mao pulled it off. it just didn't hit a resonant point for me. idk, maybe i'm not oppressed enough culturally.
i wish the poems about playing a part; being a celebrity and an Asian Woman tm and how the media will ruin your sense of self etc; had more pathos in them. but maybe i'm just not smart enough for how cerebrally constructed these poems were. admittedly they were notably un-lyrical or pretty to me; and maybe i just need a little extra sugar on top for these sorts of things.
still, good, thinky, probs, just not for me
July 6, 2019
A stunning new collection of poetry from Sally Wen Mao. In "Ghost Story" Mao writes:
When I lived, I wanted to be seen
I built this mansion of windows
for my prince and me.....
a Technicolor wilderness surrounded
us. Turquoise stags watched us shave
with electric razors. We built new barricades
between ourselves.
Ultimately, Mao's poems are about technology, about the way in which the lens changes us, frames us, distorts us, destroys us. Many of Mao's poems deal with specific events, people, and places (and there's a helpful set of info in the back of the book).
My favorite series of poems were about Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American silent film star. Ultimately, the collection is not just about a general experience of the lens on humanity, but specifically about the Asian-American experience. Because lenses have been used differently on different people. The Anna May Wong poems explore both her own life and filmography, and also take her through a "time machine" to the future, where she discovers that roles for people like her have not increased, have remained narrow, often racist and denigrating. Here's snatches from some of the stanzas in "Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86":
the future,
I've learned, is no suture.
.....
Am I surprised--
Hollywood still assumes we are all the bastard
children of the same evil dictator?
....
Darlings, let's rewrite
the script. Let's hijack the narrative, steer
the story ourselves.
This is a poetry collection that I savored over several weeks. I would read a few poems and need time to reflect.
When I lived, I wanted to be seen
I built this mansion of windows
for my prince and me.....
a Technicolor wilderness surrounded
us. Turquoise stags watched us shave
with electric razors. We built new barricades
between ourselves.
Ultimately, Mao's poems are about technology, about the way in which the lens changes us, frames us, distorts us, destroys us. Many of Mao's poems deal with specific events, people, and places (and there's a helpful set of info in the back of the book).
My favorite series of poems were about Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American silent film star. Ultimately, the collection is not just about a general experience of the lens on humanity, but specifically about the Asian-American experience. Because lenses have been used differently on different people. The Anna May Wong poems explore both her own life and filmography, and also take her through a "time machine" to the future, where she discovers that roles for people like her have not increased, have remained narrow, often racist and denigrating. Here's snatches from some of the stanzas in "Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86":
the future,
I've learned, is no suture.
.....
Am I surprised--
Hollywood still assumes we are all the bastard
children of the same evil dictator?
....
Darlings, let's rewrite
the script. Let's hijack the narrative, steer
the story ourselves.
This is a poetry collection that I savored over several weeks. I would read a few poems and need time to reflect.
March 20, 2021
Very clever concepts and moving poems. There are a lot of references to AsAm history/pop culture that I didn't know of, but she has a helpful notes section in the back for such poems (I'd recommend reading the poem, reading the notes on that poem, and then rereading the poem). now will read more on Afong Moy...wild stuff white people do for real.
Some passages/poems:
- Occidentalism (All of it. So good).
- From Ghost Story:
“That was the last
time I trusted a body that touched me.
All a ghost wants is to be chained
to a place, to someone who can’t forget
her. Every day I try to fight my own
brokenness. But once you are forgotten,
it’s not so bad: a heart broken
joins another chorus. Can you hear
the chorus speak? Can you bear
it? The words of apparitions do not belong
to a language. They flit over pines, meaningless,
and shed their skins in your hands.”
- Mutant Odalisque:
“Do they think of me as soiled
or new soil.”
- Live Feed (poem)
- Anna May Wong on Silent Films:
“I never wept audibly—I saw my
sisters in the sawmills,
reminded myself of my good luck.
Even the muzzle over my mouth
could not kill me, though I
never slept soundly through the silence.”
- Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles (the Anna May Wong series is clever)
- The Diary of Afong Moy
- Oculus:
“It was spring. I was still hopeful. In my chest, what beat
was cracked but still salvageable. Cherry petals
strewing my shoulders, a whir. Cranes
in the sky, cranes threaded on my dress.
Golden tubas warbled
as she danced. We looked up, and there was
a skylight, a dome—the oculus
at the center, through which all fears still burned
and awed.”
Some passages/poems:
- Occidentalism (All of it. So good).
- From Ghost Story:
“That was the last
time I trusted a body that touched me.
All a ghost wants is to be chained
to a place, to someone who can’t forget
her. Every day I try to fight my own
brokenness. But once you are forgotten,
it’s not so bad: a heart broken
joins another chorus. Can you hear
the chorus speak? Can you bear
it? The words of apparitions do not belong
to a language. They flit over pines, meaningless,
and shed their skins in your hands.”
- Mutant Odalisque:
“Do they think of me as soiled
or new soil.”
- Live Feed (poem)
- Anna May Wong on Silent Films:
“I never wept audibly—I saw my
sisters in the sawmills,
reminded myself of my good luck.
Even the muzzle over my mouth
could not kill me, though I
never slept soundly through the silence.”
- Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles (the Anna May Wong series is clever)
- The Diary of Afong Moy
- Oculus:
“It was spring. I was still hopeful. In my chest, what beat
was cracked but still salvageable. Cherry petals
strewing my shoulders, a whir. Cranes
in the sky, cranes threaded on my dress.
Golden tubas warbled
as she danced. We looked up, and there was
a skylight, a dome—the oculus
at the center, through which all fears still burned
and awed.”
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