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Careen
What is the nature of a desire? How do we come to terms with the systematic conditions of racism, desire, and alienation that underscore our lives? What are the generational lineages behind our daily existences? How do we fall in love against the landscape of white America?
Blending philosophy and prose, CAREEN presents a braided sequence of poems that present as études—punctuated reflections. At times sexy, deeply ironic, and melancholic, the poems in CAREEN question our deep hunger for inclusion and call back a long history of displacement. Then, “eventually, every color careens into its own lack,” and the carte blanche of whiteness in America is deftly overturned. Cut from the migration stories of a queer Asian American speaker, CAREEN starts as a cry to belong to someone, and winds up becoming a love note plunging headlong into its objects of unattainable desire.
Blending philosophy and prose, CAREEN presents a braided sequence of poems that present as études—punctuated reflections. At times sexy, deeply ironic, and melancholic, the poems in CAREEN question our deep hunger for inclusion and call back a long history of displacement. Then, “eventually, every color careens into its own lack,” and the carte blanche of whiteness in America is deftly overturned. Cut from the migration stories of a queer Asian American speaker, CAREEN starts as a cry to belong to someone, and winds up becoming a love note plunging headlong into its objects of unattainable desire.
- GenresPoetry
87 pages, Paperback
First published April 2, 2019
108 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 27, 2019
Grace Shuyi Liew sketches a world where “wrong” blooms, froths out of place. Careen, her first full-length book, is a dream abduction, off the rails. Hyper-enjambment keeps everything spinning, dashes resist closure — everything shifts surreally. Displacement is a jarring form of being, and Liew continually re-orients herself towards a world made strange.
From the get-go, we’re moving and we don’t stop:
I have since moved from a house by the train tracks to
another house
by another train tracks and every
night the train horn wakes me at
6am;
5am;
3 am;
tricks me
into believing the earth
is shattering from its
core
Liew’s accretive narration and off-kilter lineation kept me on my toes as a reader. There is no center, just another frenetic shift. One second we’re talking about dishwasher foam, then video games, trains, porn, and so on goes the digressive parade, spiraling forward with propulsive energy and “always hovering / at the outskirts / of a grand / unifying theory.”
De-centering: an affinity for edges and margins, an unfixed flickering among crevices and craggy openings. Unstructure is its own inverted landscape. “What’s left behind since then trembles faintly at the edges—an idea without an outline.” So too with genre. Hovering at the borderlands of memoir and verse, Liew offers flickering prose poems a la Rosmarie Waldrop. Parentheses (ready to disappear) (ghosting the sentence) pass, string one after another, forcing continued revision of the clause under question, or the prior parentheses, as a site for further excavation and revision. Consequentially, thingness, let alone subjectivity, is uncertain, ambiguous, and underfoot. We’re just passing through.
(Excerpted from review for Anomaly. Read full review here: https://medium.com/anomalyblog/careen...)
From the get-go, we’re moving and we don’t stop:
I have since moved from a house by the train tracks to
another house
by another train tracks and every
night the train horn wakes me at
6am;
5am;
3 am;
tricks me
into believing the earth
is shattering from its
core
Liew’s accretive narration and off-kilter lineation kept me on my toes as a reader. There is no center, just another frenetic shift. One second we’re talking about dishwasher foam, then video games, trains, porn, and so on goes the digressive parade, spiraling forward with propulsive energy and “always hovering / at the outskirts / of a grand / unifying theory.”
De-centering: an affinity for edges and margins, an unfixed flickering among crevices and craggy openings. Unstructure is its own inverted landscape. “What’s left behind since then trembles faintly at the edges—an idea without an outline.” So too with genre. Hovering at the borderlands of memoir and verse, Liew offers flickering prose poems a la Rosmarie Waldrop. Parentheses (ready to disappear) (ghosting the sentence) pass, string one after another, forcing continued revision of the clause under question, or the prior parentheses, as a site for further excavation and revision. Consequentially, thingness, let alone subjectivity, is uncertain, ambiguous, and underfoot. We’re just passing through.
(Excerpted from review for Anomaly. Read full review here: https://medium.com/anomalyblog/careen...)
May 23, 2019
Careen by Grace Shuyi Liew
Review by S. John Kennedy, EEE (Earth Explorationist Emeritus)
No one on this imperfect planet gets to choose their biological parents or their country of origin, both of which have strong influences on life’s journey. When we look for a meaningful life, our most primal human instincts, survival and sex/love kick in and rise to the surface. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs contends that we need to conquer these first before we can achieve self-esteem and self-actualization.
Ms. Liew begins on page one acknowledging her own mortality. As you read Careen, keep in the back of your mind this title, as you join Ms. Liew in your own personal side car to her experiences as you zoom through her winding journey, but hold on tight for some realistic turns that encounter some emotionally stressing events. From transgenerational trauma, to lost loves, to death of close friends, Ms. Liew has experienced more than her fair share.
Ms. Liew’s assessment of Thatcher’s controversial quote, “there is no such thing as society, we must look after ourselves first”, is right on. If we revert to a self-centered survival instinct, we miss out on a tender relationship like that shared by Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
Ms. Liew has literally traveled the world and witnessed the traumatic consequences of the control and exploitation of all people. Ms. Liew understands the Master/Slave practices abound in every culture by those that want to take from others to gain their own self-importance. These characters thrive in every cultural setting and become so entrenched it is virtually impossible to escape them.
Ms. Liew struggles a little to discover her own identity. She acknowledges that “Mirroring others to find myself only leads to invisibility”, but “To whom do you give the potential to seize the whole space of you”? Ms. Liew is courageous in exposing her own personal encounters and traumas. The last two lines of the book summarize her optimism that her efforts have not been in vein, but an inspiration for us to open our minds and souls to others. This book is her altruistic gift to those fortunate enough to read her work and a realization of her climb to the top of the pyramid of her own self-actualization. She realizes her own mortality, but her words will now resonate into the future.
Review by S. John Kennedy, EEE (Earth Explorationist Emeritus)
No one on this imperfect planet gets to choose their biological parents or their country of origin, both of which have strong influences on life’s journey. When we look for a meaningful life, our most primal human instincts, survival and sex/love kick in and rise to the surface. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs contends that we need to conquer these first before we can achieve self-esteem and self-actualization.
Ms. Liew begins on page one acknowledging her own mortality. As you read Careen, keep in the back of your mind this title, as you join Ms. Liew in your own personal side car to her experiences as you zoom through her winding journey, but hold on tight for some realistic turns that encounter some emotionally stressing events. From transgenerational trauma, to lost loves, to death of close friends, Ms. Liew has experienced more than her fair share.
Ms. Liew’s assessment of Thatcher’s controversial quote, “there is no such thing as society, we must look after ourselves first”, is right on. If we revert to a self-centered survival instinct, we miss out on a tender relationship like that shared by Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
Ms. Liew has literally traveled the world and witnessed the traumatic consequences of the control and exploitation of all people. Ms. Liew understands the Master/Slave practices abound in every culture by those that want to take from others to gain their own self-importance. These characters thrive in every cultural setting and become so entrenched it is virtually impossible to escape them.
Ms. Liew struggles a little to discover her own identity. She acknowledges that “Mirroring others to find myself only leads to invisibility”, but “To whom do you give the potential to seize the whole space of you”? Ms. Liew is courageous in exposing her own personal encounters and traumas. The last two lines of the book summarize her optimism that her efforts have not been in vein, but an inspiration for us to open our minds and souls to others. This book is her altruistic gift to those fortunate enough to read her work and a realization of her climb to the top of the pyramid of her own self-actualization. She realizes her own mortality, but her words will now resonate into the future.
July 31, 2019
Astoundingly smart, this book tackles trauma in a way that lets the read in--in no uncertain terms--on what it means to feel there's nowhere to put one's feet, that shame has rendered each surface a kind of inside out revulsion. Towards the middle of the book the poet uses "notes" to create beautiful trains of thought around spaces while the speaker aims to eek out an understanding of where life has brought her.
February 21, 2021
Astoundingly good, one of the best single volumes (non anthology) of poetry I've ever read, up there with Elizabeth Bishop or Seamus Heaney, not that those are similar in voice or style.
Careen covers legacies of colonialism and migration; race, gender, and sexuality; American essence and sin; nature, friendship, love, and fear... All with visceral, gripping, compelling language. A searing and indelible experience that refracted and transported me. I can't wait for more.
Careen covers legacies of colonialism and migration; race, gender, and sexuality; American essence and sin; nature, friendship, love, and fear... All with visceral, gripping, compelling language. A searing and indelible experience that refracted and transported me. I can't wait for more.
May 23, 2019
An emotion-provoking collection of poetry. My favorite was "What Does it Mean to be Durational, Not Eternal", it was particularly powerful and really resonated with me. Overall, it was a great read. I would highly recommend it.
January 27, 2021
A book of poems about trying to figure out who you are and how you fit into the world. Contains long poems that are easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews