An Aquarium

by Jeffrey Yang

From “Abalone” to “Zooxanthellae,” Jeffrey Yang’s debut poetry collection is full of the exhilarating colors and ominous forms of aquatic life. But deeper under the surface are his observations on war, environmental degradation, language, and history, as a father—troubled by violence and human mismanagement of the world—offers advice to a newborn son.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2008

About the author

Jeffrey Yang is a poet, translator, and editor at New Directions Publishing Corp. He translated the Qian Jia Shi under the title Rhythm 226, and his poetry has appeared in the Nation, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Beacon, New York."

Reviews

[Bogi Takács]

This was an impulse borrow from my academic library; it was on the end of the shelf and I'm always here for poems about sea life.

I loved the concept of sea creatures for every letter of the alphabet, but the actual poems often didn't quite work for me. I felt there was sometimes an outright effort to make the text obscure, in a very 2000s "Look, how postmodern!" way. I was very happy to see the multilingual poems though; those elements did not feel obscure to me.

There was enough to keep me intrigued so that I would read a more recent book of his, but not enough to immediately seek it out.

Find me elsewhere: My Patreon | My Bluesky account

Source of the book: KU Watson Library

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag where poems that are plainly pointless and banal, senseless poems that are infected by a post-structuralist inspired incomprehensibility, and poems that are memorably playful, politically-charged, and interesting inhabit one fascinating collection.

Read more: http://karlomongaya.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/jeffrey-yangs-aquarium-poetry/

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything we touch
ends up in the ocean so
if you want to feel people go
for a swim

[Ted Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book's conceit, an appealing one , is to write a series of poems on the fish and other ocean creatures one would come across in an aquarium, in alphabetical order. It's a sort of involute indexing of whims and amusements that would soon get ragged with repetition in heavier hands, but Yang's touch is light , and varies his approach , creature to creature, and what his musings land on, of course, are continued inquiry into how we know the world.

We mirror, we model, we mimic, we claim credit for all the nobility that happens in domains that are, in fact, alien to our cities, countries and cultural ambiguities that Yang has the pleasure of gentle yanking our chain. As usual, the real issue isn't so much the wonders of sea life as exhibited--and the phrase ''exhibited underscores the problematic nature with which human languages address the external world as if it depended on our giving it narration--as it is something else altogether.
There is great appeal in the work of poets who can artfully contain a series of ideas in a brief piece of verse, the goal being to turn philosophical precepts into the glitter surface of a poem's allure and still address an issue quite beyond the more comfortable subjects of beauty or an aesthetically constrained idea of Truth, capital "T". Jeffrey Yang's first collection, An Aquarium (Graywolf Press) is a series of poems that at first seem like they concern themselves exclusively with ocean life; indeed they do, but the author is shrewd in seeing what other areas, outside the aquarium tank, these creatures touch upon. Yang offers up a view on how we think about things. Here, in the poem Parrotfish , the creature is nearly lost as the poems starts like the first sentence of an encyclopedia entry and quickly turns into a bit of cocktail chatter seeming between artists, secret agents and critics, all of whom sacrifice the subject in favor of extending their rhetorical devices.


Parrotfish

The life phases of a parrotfish
are expressed in colors.By day,
the parrotfish replenishes coral reef
sands, and by night spins
its mucous cocooned-
room. Is this art's archetype
abstracted from politics?
Picasso thought abstraction a cul-de-
sac. The CIA loved Abstract
Expressionism. Hockney: "I
don't think that there is really such a thing
as abstraction." Langer:"All genuine art
is abstract."
What do you think parrot-
fish?


I think the aim is to undermine the insidious intent of rhetorical questions that frame ready made political assumptions. The question in "Is this art's archetype abstracted from politics" forces agreement from the reader though it's disingenuous appeal to a person's vanity, from which an argument may be made for agendas that have little to with art, parrot fish, or life in general. This is the use of language that treats the things in nature as if they were symbols, real or potential, for great oppositions at war in an unseen metaphysical realm.
Yang seems aware that there is a very human tendency to regard the world outside our senses as though it were a linear narrative being played out, with virtues reducible to good v evil, beauty v vulgarity, honesty v criminal intent being the principle extremes in play. The narrative form , the storyline, is a convenient way of making the raw experience comprehensible, but taking a cue from Heidegger's work in phenomenology, Yang would have us be aware that the parrot fish and its environmental niche are not abstractions of anything but rather expressions of their own life. "Back to the data", as the man said and, in the choice phrase of the confounding Ezra Pound ,"the natural object is already the adequate symbol".


He follows the erring assumptions to an unusual but logical conclusion: the symbol of beauty and abstraction must surely be brilliant intellectually, and so must, by default, have an opinion of the matter. He places us in witness to an absurdity: intelligent men, seduced by their nuanced sophistry, asking a fish for an informed opinion.
Yang seems to me to be making fun of the way we call things either "beautiful" or "abstract"; for all the sophisticated and nuanced reasons critics, theologians and agents of intrigue approach the subject, the competing philosophies all fall short, far short of articulating something truly tangible. The irony is that the embodiment of all this speculation, the lexicon-heavy guess work to a thing's essence, is not aware that it is beautiful, abstract, or is somehow an embodiment of a set of ideas that are meant to change the world. The parrot fish isn't even aware that it's a parrot fish, which is entirely the point--it is too busy being part of the the rest of it's underworld. Unlike human beings, who are continually trying to separate themselves from nature so that they may subjugate it a little more


Thrive as we might,we are lost in our self-consciousness and cherish the sort of autonomy one might perceive in the creatures swimming their currents, inhabiting their niches, living survival and death in the same fluttering of a gill. But beyond this, Yang streamlines his erudition--these aren't lectures, these are lyrics that are broadened or collapsed as the idea determines. An admirable effort by a writer with a composer's ability to embrace ambiguity of form with a coherence of flow.
at 10:45 AM 0 comments Links to this post

[Peter Prokopiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title might be somewhat misleading, as in most poems Yang does NOT talk about sea life. It is more like a starting point for his musings. Some were quite prosy, some funny, some too enigmatic, but at his best Yang writes splendid stuff. There is something of Marianne Moore in his first collection and it’s a pity he grew distant from it.

Here are the three poems which I found the strongest:

Octopus

Tikopians believe the octopus
is both a mountain with tentacle-
streams, and the sun
with its rays, so should not be eaten.
The mystery of metaphor is
nearly lost to us, as if
only the illusion of metaphor
remains. Or the myth of metaphor.
Or metaphor without ikon.
Rousseau writes:
The first speech was all in poetry.
Or poetry's reasoning
was the first figure of speech.
Palin genesis of word (butter
bird) mind's
forms, reveals
mind ether, spirit
unhindered.


Starfish

One feels a sainte-terrer walking
the starfish shore. The soul
delighteth in decussate symmetry
dwells quincuncially. Without a word
prayer elevates the heart. Star-
fish have neither brain nor heart.
Perhaps they are pure intellect of
soul pure coincidence pure
feeling clinging to the rocks of Paradise.
Far from living water the soul desiccates.


Foraminifera

The test of a foraminifera
is its shell--tectinous,
agglutinated, or calcareous
endoskeleton
cytoplasm streams
thru foramen chamber
to chamber of a single cell, granulo-
reticulose pseudopodia motion,
memory palace of Okeanos.
Foraminiferans are found
at all latitudes and marine
environments - foraminiferal white
of the White Cliffs of Dover.
In the pyramids of Giza
Herodotus saw "petrified lentils";
Aldrovandi's eye turned
from Aristotle toward Galileo:
the rhombic shells
have epigenetic stony tubercles.
For Oppen
a test of poetry is
sincerity, clarity, respect..
For Zukofsky the range of pleasure
it affords as sight, sound, and intellection.
In a dream
Vishnu visited Appakavi
who received the secrets of
Nannaya's grammar: Poetry
is the ultimate learning.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. This was a short, really enjoyable book of poems, largely in bestiary form and largely about fish. In a few cases it wandered into mythology and science history - the long prose poem the collection ended on was about US atomic testing in the Pacific - but the bestiary poems were the ones that stood out for me. They tended to be short and deceptively simple; of these, "Anemone" is my favourite. The rest, which comprised maybe a third, tended to be longer and, for me at least, more disjointed, with lots of different images (or different names, particularly of types of fish in different languages) stuck together. With one exception, I didn't enjoy these so much, but that one exception was the best poem of the book. Called "U.S.," it's a long list of descriptions of America where all the descriptions are fish. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but it's honestly quite amazing: "The U.S. is a small fish / with a false head; or a big fish / with false scales; or a dream / of the perfect fish / that turns into a nightmare" (p. 50) and on it goes, fishy metaphor after fishy metaphor, dozens of them, and I was delighted.

[Jaylee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is... terrible.

I know I'm not a poetry person, but this book opened with a quote about daydreaming, wandering through an aquarium and letting your mind wander and dream. Each poem is about an ocean creature (more or less) and I was really excited to read it.

Yyyyeah. Every poem has one of 3 parts:

- a bunch of references to myths, historical people, quotes, etc. all jammed together in a list
- some actual lovely lines about the animal in question
- an abrupt and random political or philosophical statement awkwardly shoehorned in so that each poem has some kind of "message" or meaning.

like 3 poems in a row use the word "politicians" in the last few lines. It's so repetitive and garish, there's no art or subtlety to it at all.

it's... awful. Especially because the poet is drawing his metaphors and spiritual meanings from facts about the animals... but some of those facts are wrong? lmao. He has a whole poem about crabs riding on jellyfish, and how the jellyfish dies for the crab to explore the world or some shit but....... jellyfish are like 90% water and can't support the weight of anything. Furthermore, crabs walk on the ground and jellyfish only live in open water. How would a crab even get on top of a jellyfish? I don't... what?? "An orca is a whale within a dolphin within a whale." That's..... no? lmao.

I also feel like if half your poem is random quotes from other sources, you didn't actually write a poem. You looked up the wikipedia page for this animal and arranged it in a pretty way. Good job I guess.

IDK MAN I saw a book of poems inspired by sea creatures and took a chance and instead suffered through 30 pages of pretentious nonsense.

Ok one last annoyance: he is constantly talking about the sex lives of sea creatures and doing it from a *very* heteronormative perspective, which is absurd considering sea creatures (more than any other group of animals) has such an amazingly wide variety of biological sex characteristics, mating habits, etc. that go beyond our ideas of gender and one-to-one male/female partnerships for reproduction.... how do you see that and come away with shit like "lol barnacles have huge dicks" and "man wouldn't it be nice to have threesomes like a clownfish" gawd.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anemone
Anemones are warriors, colonizing
rock and reef in ranks. The history
of the world is told thru the eyes
of the colonizer, who takes pleasure in
sticking his finger into an anemone's
mouth until it starves.
For the anemone is the soul
says Saint Theresa
which retreats into itself
in a prayer of recollection. (4)

Octopus
Tikopians believe the octopus
is both a mountain with tentacle-
streams, and the sun
with its rays, so should not be eaten.
The mystery of metaphor is
nearly lost to us, as if
only the illusion of metaphor
remains. Or the myth of metaphor.
Or metaphor without ikon.
Rousseau writes:
The first speech was all in poetry.
Or poetry's reasoning
was the first figure
of speech. Palin
genesis of word (butter
bird) mind's
forms, reveals
mind ether, spirit
unhindered. (32)

[Joseph Mirabelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the poems were awesome. The interplay between different residents of the aquarium were awesome, and rereading the collection a few times is more and more enlightening. My low rating is simply that between the level of marine biology and the number of different (often difficult or impossible to translate on the spot) languages in the individual poems made the collection unbearable to read aloud, and understand without more effort that a poor grad student on a road trip like myself has. The audience who can appreciate "An Aquarium" on a first pass is limited at best.

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the creatures in an aquarium, Yang combines alphabet with science, war, metaphor, religion, philosophy, translation, politics, and colors; he spins the fabulous into the realistic, the hilarious into the horrible, and the scientific becomes emotional. Like a scholar with nitrogen narcosis, like the son of a chemist and mystic, he culls materials from diverse spheres then places them in the tank.

When I enter a Yang poem, I have no idea how I might exit. In “Octopus,” he starts with a belief held by the Tikopians, a Polynesian island community, that an octopus “is both a mountain with tentacle- / streams, and the sun / with its rays, so should not be eaten” and ends the poem with “mind ether, spirit / unhindered.” These poems fold into themselves, transforming non sequiturs into a meditation with backbone, with lyricism. Listen to “Octopus” one more time. Can you feel the echo of “[a] mountain with tentacle- / streams” and “mind ether,” as well as “the sun / with its rays” and “spirit / unhindered”?

These poems deliver the strangeness of our world and how we might avoid inhumanity by nurturing our connection to, not only these creatures, but also each other. Below the buoyancy of these poems, there’s a gravity and importance, with no trace of didacticism.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing collection of short, but excellent poems--mostly following a theme of fish in an aquarium. The deviations from that theme are enjoyable for the most part. But it's the connections between and reflections on fish (or their nature) and some aspect (our habits, the realities we've created in the world) of humanity that are great and often stunning. The Seahorse poem being one of the best examples--the line about protective covering is tremendous. The only thing preventing this book from getting 5 stars from me is the occasional disaster (see Mola Mola) that appears to be some sort of word-association, synonym-builder poems. While kind of interesting that many times the synonyms span several languages, I find these poems to be uneffective, distracting from the clear prose that communicates so well. These word-salad jumbles are perhaps meant to expose something in the synonyms and associations, but they are about as pleasant as a stone in your ice cream.

[Lynne Fort · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a novice in the art of poetry, I feel unqualified to review this, but I'll do it for the other novices out there. Some of these poems were beautifully constructed and blew my mind; all were meticulously crafted; some, I admit, were over my head. However, I would say that this book is worth checking out, because the poems that you like will be worth whichever ones you decide you don't. And they will all make you think.

[jennifer]

"One feels a sainte-terrer walking
the starfish shore. The soul
delighteth in decussate symmetry
dwells quincuncially. WIthout a word
prayer elevates the heart. Star-
fish have neither brain nor heart.
Perhaps they are pure intellect of
soul pure coincidence pure
feeling clinging to the rocks of Paradise.
Far from living water the soul desiccates."

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Yang's An Aquarium is an acquired amalgam of sweet and sour tastes of academic-scholar-seared seafood with allusive seaweed stirred in a strange alphabet soup. Such starfish stillness writing style wise. Being attuned to wisdom and world literatures, these prose poems perform passages, politics, and proverbs from past to present. Bearing witness to planetary presences.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 & i wavered a lot on whether to round up or down. some seriously amazing, hilarious, musical, philosophical poems. some the just fell totally flat for me. but the sum is greater than the parts, and this is definitely worth rereading.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a smart, inventive, entertaining collection of poems into which one can get lost, surface again, & then dive in for more.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

hooray for jeffrey!

[Menser · Rating 5 out of 5]

sweet, funny, deep, multilingual, punctuated punchy anarcho-politics, channels Han Shan: luminous like wet grass on a hi altitude cliff.

[Paul]

Review at asianamlitfans.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection, small poems doing a bit of work.