The Desert

by Brandon Shimoda

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Brandon Shimoda's THE DESERT, a sequel to his William Carlos Williams Award-winning book EVENING ORACLE, guides us deep into, and then back out of, a rich yet desolate North American landscape. Divided into seven sections--featuring poems, letters, diary entries, and photographs--the desert's multiplicity emerges through a ranging exploration of its Japanese American incarceration sites, homeless population, flora and fauna, violence, beauty, and how they combine to reflect this poet's contemporary view of history. Written over three years in the deserts of Arizona, the poet introduces us to the souls of the living and dead, their shadows still residing over the landscape and its mythology.

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

Reviews

[D.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timeless set of field notes, resonating backward and forward, with a sense of immediacy and danger that echoes in our present time as mass incarcerations of immigrants and the militarization of policing looms over our fragile democracy:

That's what it means to be
A citizen: erasing

Erasure is a constant in Shimoda's desert: "There is trash and mesquite trees and broken glass and waterlogged sleeping bags and creosote bushes." Here, in the midst of the great blankness of the landscape, Shimoda engages the ghost world "this landscape which feels as congenital to our condition as it does alien" and speaks to the Japanese Americans interned in the massive detention facilities now being repurposed for another population of detainees. "rivers evaporated. The prisoners disintegrated/ Not even their secrets"

Like George Oppen, Shimoda's style is solid, minimal, direct:

Children are asleep
On the cold cement
Sleep-like children, fish on slabs
Cold in heat, even, what is their being?
Fish on the floor, wet on the floor
Swords in a drawer

If you have been haunted by recent images of children in cages, you will surely understand the power of this collection. A brilliant, searing collection.

[Brian Alarcon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s interesting to think about The Desert as a traveling archive because of how personal it
feels, especially in the middle prose section of the book, where the narrative takes the form of
journal entries in modern time. Yet, now I understand better what the repeated question alludes
to: “can you live in the desert?” With our modern technology and geopolitics we may think of
pools in Palm Springs, or suburbs in Las Vegas, and Shimoda is aware of this. Instead he
complicates that assumption by presenting to us the lands’ memory through his archive-voice:
“Where you can’t be/ in maps .../ as with your thoughts/ ... in the formless territory/ that roars
before you/ home is a deception.” (67) The desert as a place that has caused displacement and
distrust from even basic human concepts such as participating in geography and having a home.
In that vein, Shimoda uses the personal narrative to muddy the archive and vice versa,
blurring the lines of when we are in the desert in current times, and when we are listening to a
Japanese-American voice incarcerated in a camp in the 1940’s. A line like “ the apocalypse is the
revelation of what already took place” (93) is a perfect example of this archive-voice. The
apocalypse is something we think about as strictly in the future, yet Shimoda’s daily interaction
with the prison camp on his commute generates more dystopian images than any “magma,
horsemen, disease.” His archival voice manifests in the extremes of absolute immersion in life in
a concentration camp versus the personal, modern-day narrator who teaches kids with possible
generational trauma. Yet it is in these moments where he finds the space between these extremes
that I find the most troubled, because I don’t know where I am in my journey with the speaker,
and I feel most clearly the parallels of modern existence in places that have brought immense
trauma to people.

[Elly Call · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, this poetry enraged me. I have a terrible personal need to know “what it means” when I read poetry—even though logically I know that’s a terrible mindset to apply to good poetry. Part of what I love about poetry is the opportunities for evoking more than one idea at once with line breaks, and packing multiple interesting meanings onto one word. BUT I couldn’t get around the habit here and this book is abstract as hell but laden with the sense of meaning, memories to mine, history to be understood.

When I finally just surrendered to the imagery and the feeling the abstract lines left me with, The resulting feelings left me with a much greater sense of meaning at the end.

So profound I stared into space and randomly very...funny? This book is unlike any I’ve ever read and in fact I feel more like this four star rating may have more to do with me than Shimoda—some of this just went over my head so I almost feel like I can’t judge it accurately.

[Carolyn]

Sealey book 23.

I did not make it all the way through this collection. It’s so heavy (deservedly so) and the first week of school is such a stressful whirlwind and the issues these poems confront just went my stress skyrocketing. Maybe you’re in a calmer moment of life than me? Maybe you’re ready for some heavy reckoning?
.
Someone somewhere had posted a review of a (new I think?) Brandon Shimoda collection but this was the only one the CPL had, at least when I searched. I’ll try it again someday!

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

'My fortune begins
on the
bottom of a lake
15,000 years old
...
...
scored into the land
a fossil
evaporated

I line the grave

with the pages of the book
that will succeed you'

(from 'Bride', p107)

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

thx for the rec, A. I lv this book.

[Lisa]

This collection of poetry wasn’t what I was looking for, even though I admire Shimoda the poet.

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

:O