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Iron Goddess of Mercy
Iron Goddess of Mercyby Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel The Tiger Flu) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dance with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term "Asian" can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. Iron Goddess of Mercy is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble.
Presented in sixty-four fragments to honor the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights.
Finally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the
compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin.
Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.
Presented in sixty-four fragments to honor the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights.
Finally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the
compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin.
Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.
176 pages, Paperback
First published April 13, 2021
12 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Larissa Lai
17 books236 followersLarissa Lai has authored three novels, The Tiger Flu, Salt Fish Girl and When Fox Is a Thousand; two poetry collections, sybil unrest (with Rita Wong) and Automaton Biographies; a chapbook, Eggs in the Basement; and a critical book, Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. A recipient of the Astraea Foundation Emerging Writers' Award, she has been a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Tiptree Award, the Sunburst Award, the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award, the bpNichol Chapbook Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize and the ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism.
Larissa was born in La Jolla, California and grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She spent the 1990s as a freelance writer and cultural organizer. Her first publication was an essay about Asian Canadian contemporary media, published in the catalogue for the 1991 exhibition Yellow Peril: Reconsidered. She has held writer-in-residence positions at the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University and the University of Guelph. In 2001, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. From 2001-2006, she did a PhD in English at the University of Calgary. She was Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at UBC from 2007-2014. In 2014, she returned to the University of Calgary to take up a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing.
She likes dogs, is afraid of cats, and feels at home in both Vancouver and Calgary.
Larissa was born in La Jolla, California and grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She spent the 1990s as a freelance writer and cultural organizer. Her first publication was an essay about Asian Canadian contemporary media, published in the catalogue for the 1991 exhibition Yellow Peril: Reconsidered. She has held writer-in-residence positions at the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University and the University of Guelph. In 2001, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. From 2001-2006, she did a PhD in English at the University of Calgary. She was Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at UBC from 2007-2014. In 2014, she returned to the University of Calgary to take up a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing.
She likes dogs, is afraid of cats, and feels at home in both Vancouver and Calgary.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 8, 2025
Hot damn this book is on FIRE. Larissa Lai has achieved something miraculous— the formal influences and disruptions, the rollicking wordplay, the burning critique, and the absolute treasure trove of literary and cultural references all tumble together in this poem to create an experience so visceral it felt as though I was on the move while reading it. I’ve only read (and re-read!) certain of Larissa Lai’s essays before but I will absolutely continue to read more of her creative work, this blew me away.
January 24, 2022
Rain on me blood, water or milk liquid silky as the ilk of connection springs unexpected forms from the fountain of hope, dope enough to relax all this thinking.
Iron Goddess of Mercy is a collection of experimental prose poems about the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries, environmental anxiety, the chaos and alienation of urban life, and so much more. Lai's poetic style reminds me of the voice of her character Kirilow from The Tiger Flu, albeit more free-form and opaque. What may appear to be free association on the surface reveals itself to be deliberate and multi-layered in meaning. The poems vary in quality, and I found some more compelling than others. Overall, this is a fascinating and truly unique collection.
Iron Goddess of Mercy is a collection of experimental prose poems about the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries, environmental anxiety, the chaos and alienation of urban life, and so much more. Lai's poetic style reminds me of the voice of her character Kirilow from The Tiger Flu, albeit more free-form and opaque. What may appear to be free association on the surface reveals itself to be deliberate and multi-layered in meaning. The poems vary in quality, and I found some more compelling than others. Overall, this is a fascinating and truly unique collection.
March 25, 2025
A whirlwind of a poem. Absolutely genius and monumental in the execution of its conceit and the kind of collection that will have me ruminating on the architecture of words for a very long time. It took me a few attempts to get this baby read because every time I didn't finish it in one sitting and then would pick it up again, I felt I needed to start it from the top to immerse myself properly in the landscape of Lai's words. I would recommend it to all my poetry fans out there, but my sole advice would be to give yourself the reverential space required to consume this collection in one sitting. It felt like Lai has taken me on a trip across time, space, and identity, and I loved it!
May 5, 2022
In 2022, I'm continuing my challenge to read one book per month randomly selected from my TBR. This was the entry for April.
Probably 4.5*? This was absolutely riveting. Some segments were definitely stronger than others, but they're so short that there's no wait at all before the next fragment catches the imagination. I loved the wordplay and the rhythm so much - it's fun to read out loud, and overall very clever and playful even when dealing with difficult history. This is the kind of book that's easy to pick up a segment here and there - pull the divine and the divined from it, at a moment's notice.
Probably 4.5*? This was absolutely riveting. Some segments were definitely stronger than others, but they're so short that there's no wait at all before the next fragment catches the imagination. I loved the wordplay and the rhythm so much - it's fun to read out loud, and overall very clever and playful even when dealing with difficult history. This is the kind of book that's easy to pick up a segment here and there - pull the divine and the divined from it, at a moment's notice.
March 26, 2021
Rather than a set of poems, Iron Goddess of Mercy is one poem. Written in strongly syllabic long-form epistolary, breaking into stark haiku, it is a smart cutting, imaginative rush, breaking political and spiritual, while ranting both love and curses, steady and passionate.
From the synopsis it says, "Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term 'Asian' can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations"
Iron Goddess of Mercy is named from a tea, the gift of bodhisattva Guan Yin. Like the drink for which it was named, the book steeps and steams, fragrant and burning, bringing life to the corners of the fragile heart.
For any lover of poetry, here is one poet whose voice you will rush to return to.
From the synopsis it says, "Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term 'Asian' can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations"
Iron Goddess of Mercy is named from a tea, the gift of bodhisattva Guan Yin. Like the drink for which it was named, the book steeps and steams, fragrant and burning, bringing life to the corners of the fragile heart.
For any lover of poetry, here is one poet whose voice you will rush to return to.
Read
January 7, 2024Sharp, unexpected, captivating, raw. A true display of the power of poetry.
June 2, 2021
Word salad - pretty word salad - i loved the images and phrases but could not follow enough to get a coherent image or feeling or theme in my head. It was much better when i read it aloud - perhaps it is how it should be read. I liked the themes that I could find and the threads of ideas and the raging but as much as I wanted to and tried to I could not like this book of poems.
Read
March 8, 2021This one was a bit too clever for me, I think.
September 21, 2021
Originally reviewed by Ryan Cox for Prairie Fire's Book Reviews Program. prairiefire.ca
A place is never simple, it is always shot through with the histories, symbols, and identities that collide and contest it, by the accrual of meanings over time and the conversations between those meanings. Given the role place often plays in how we understand and define ourselves, this messiness can seem infinitely complicating and disorienting. This would certainly seem to be true of a place like Hong Kong, the inspiration for Larissa Lai’s new book length poem, Iron Goddess of Mercy.
Hong Kong is marked by the occupations of the British and Japanese, by colonialism and imperialism, by the contradictions inherent within the idea of “One Country, Two Systems” and the ensuing pro-democracy protests. Lai’s speaker throughout the poem addresses these complicated histories and works to understand identity as a product of them. In a passage addressed to the liver this becomes clear when Lai writes, “Are you after all the soul’s meat taking heat for what we denied when we ditched the Tao to go Confucian, Christian, then Euro Enlightenment Canada Dry? My passions make corned beef hash of this mess polyvocal syncretic as the crypt of postmemory’s iron box.” The speaker describes a sense of loss while moving through these spiritual philosophies and, significantly, that movement is from the Chinese to the European. However, by describing the resulting mess as polyvocal and syncretic, it suggests that the problem is less one of loss, than one of accretion. The speaking self speaks in multiple languages, multiple voices simultaneously making it difficult for even the speaker to fully capture a singular meaning, an uncomplicated identity.
This is further problematized by the fact that this question of identity is being asked in a Canada with its own fraught construction of Chinese identity. When Lai writes that “Sheena the punk rocker can’t be an Asian of any persuasion,” it signals both a perceived otherness or alterity, and a flattening of Asian identities and experiences into a singular structure. This is a particularly significant part of the work the text does because it unsettles the myth of Canada by contextualizing that perception of otherness within the histories of violence that undergird the settler state. Contemporary anxieties about Capitalism, white supremacy, and the persistence of colonial structures are presented in parallel to the exploitation of Chinese labour in the building of the transcontinental railroad. Otherness and exclusion, displacement and violence, in the contemporary are rooted in a real and present history. This, of course, complicates the idea of “Asian-ness” as experienced in North America. Lai’s poem makes reference to Nanking and other Japanese atrocities perpetrated against the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War (WWII), which serves to disrupt the coherence of a singular Asian identity. However, the text also finds solidarity between its speaker and Japanese internees in Canada by engaging with questions of place and power. None of Iron Goddess of Mercy’s navigations of identity are simple—identity is always a complex question—but the difficulty and intensity that the poem confronts the reader with are both necessary and rewarding.
Iron Goddess of Mercy benefits immensely from a particularly deft pairing of form to content. The long poem allows for ideas to accrue, to collide, to recur, because it doesn’t require lyric closure. While the poem achieves a peace by the end of the book, this resolution does not close off any of the uncertainties and contradictions that have been present to that point, but rather accepts them. Each section of the poem is made up of a prose poetic epistle followed by a strongly imagistic three-line conclusion, which gives the poem the feel of an extended haibun. This form creates a space where the self and place and the relationship between can be interrogated with requisite intensity while still allowing for meditative pause and release. The epistolary sections of the poem stack images on images and references on references. They pivot beautifully midline using internal rhyme or assonance to draw together concepts and feelings. They rage and roar, shaking with passion and energy, and the imagistic codas allow for moments of reflection that underscore that intensity while providing the reader a moment to breathe. Lai’s use of rhythm throughout the text is masterful and, most importantly, serves both the poem and the reader.
Larissa Lai’s Iron Goddess of Mercy is not a light read—no book that deals with the questions that Lai’s poems ask, that is worth the reader’s time, could be. Iron Goddess of Mercy will reward the reader the time they give it. It is intense and beautiful. It reflects the messiness of place and identity, and the way those two things are intertwined. The way it deftly, poetically, handles that messiness is something to be admired.
A place is never simple, it is always shot through with the histories, symbols, and identities that collide and contest it, by the accrual of meanings over time and the conversations between those meanings. Given the role place often plays in how we understand and define ourselves, this messiness can seem infinitely complicating and disorienting. This would certainly seem to be true of a place like Hong Kong, the inspiration for Larissa Lai’s new book length poem, Iron Goddess of Mercy.
Hong Kong is marked by the occupations of the British and Japanese, by colonialism and imperialism, by the contradictions inherent within the idea of “One Country, Two Systems” and the ensuing pro-democracy protests. Lai’s speaker throughout the poem addresses these complicated histories and works to understand identity as a product of them. In a passage addressed to the liver this becomes clear when Lai writes, “Are you after all the soul’s meat taking heat for what we denied when we ditched the Tao to go Confucian, Christian, then Euro Enlightenment Canada Dry? My passions make corned beef hash of this mess polyvocal syncretic as the crypt of postmemory’s iron box.” The speaker describes a sense of loss while moving through these spiritual philosophies and, significantly, that movement is from the Chinese to the European. However, by describing the resulting mess as polyvocal and syncretic, it suggests that the problem is less one of loss, than one of accretion. The speaking self speaks in multiple languages, multiple voices simultaneously making it difficult for even the speaker to fully capture a singular meaning, an uncomplicated identity.
This is further problematized by the fact that this question of identity is being asked in a Canada with its own fraught construction of Chinese identity. When Lai writes that “Sheena the punk rocker can’t be an Asian of any persuasion,” it signals both a perceived otherness or alterity, and a flattening of Asian identities and experiences into a singular structure. This is a particularly significant part of the work the text does because it unsettles the myth of Canada by contextualizing that perception of otherness within the histories of violence that undergird the settler state. Contemporary anxieties about Capitalism, white supremacy, and the persistence of colonial structures are presented in parallel to the exploitation of Chinese labour in the building of the transcontinental railroad. Otherness and exclusion, displacement and violence, in the contemporary are rooted in a real and present history. This, of course, complicates the idea of “Asian-ness” as experienced in North America. Lai’s poem makes reference to Nanking and other Japanese atrocities perpetrated against the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War (WWII), which serves to disrupt the coherence of a singular Asian identity. However, the text also finds solidarity between its speaker and Japanese internees in Canada by engaging with questions of place and power. None of Iron Goddess of Mercy’s navigations of identity are simple—identity is always a complex question—but the difficulty and intensity that the poem confronts the reader with are both necessary and rewarding.
Iron Goddess of Mercy benefits immensely from a particularly deft pairing of form to content. The long poem allows for ideas to accrue, to collide, to recur, because it doesn’t require lyric closure. While the poem achieves a peace by the end of the book, this resolution does not close off any of the uncertainties and contradictions that have been present to that point, but rather accepts them. Each section of the poem is made up of a prose poetic epistle followed by a strongly imagistic three-line conclusion, which gives the poem the feel of an extended haibun. This form creates a space where the self and place and the relationship between can be interrogated with requisite intensity while still allowing for meditative pause and release. The epistolary sections of the poem stack images on images and references on references. They pivot beautifully midline using internal rhyme or assonance to draw together concepts and feelings. They rage and roar, shaking with passion and energy, and the imagistic codas allow for moments of reflection that underscore that intensity while providing the reader a moment to breathe. Lai’s use of rhythm throughout the text is masterful and, most importantly, serves both the poem and the reader.
Larissa Lai’s Iron Goddess of Mercy is not a light read—no book that deals with the questions that Lai’s poems ask, that is worth the reader’s time, could be. Iron Goddess of Mercy will reward the reader the time they give it. It is intense and beautiful. It reflects the messiness of place and identity, and the way those two things are intertwined. The way it deftly, poetically, handles that messiness is something to be admired.
Read
July 16, 2021Iron Goddess of Mercy was a New Suns book for our April 2021: All of Yesterday's Tomorrows box. Read my special review (including an annotated section of the poem) here!
"Iron Goddess of Mercy is one of the least traditional books of poetry I’ve ever read. It’s a single long poem presented in sixty-four fragments—each a solid 1-2 page chunk of text—to honor the hexagrams of the I Ching. Every fragment closes with a haiku, a characteristic borrowed from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing. There are lots of internal rhymes and wordplay ('Dear Dolly, gosh golly implicated in the hog’s holly clearing brush for democracy’s prop prop propolis...'). Almost everything is reference to pop culture and politics and history, all at once. Most of the text is made up of long sentences with little to no punctuation and, in some fragments, no capitalization, either. It’s the kind of book you go into fully expecting not to understand everything that is said...
Except—I kind of love this book. It’s relentless and strange and encompasses so much, from the history of Hong Kong to Ancient Greek mythology to Black, Indigenous, and Asian movements. I like to imagine that this poem is a distillation of what it means to be huáqiáo, overseas Chinese: Michael Jackson and Moana and the Moon and magic and a machine all coexisting at once in every possible permutation inside you, inside these sentences. Even when I don’t fully know or understand what Larissa Lai is referring to, I can read out loud and enjoy the way she makes sounds run into each other and bounce apart. I can picture the 'octopus wav[ing] its metro card at the South China Morning Post conceding to PRC propaganda' and laugh. I can sit and ponder the many things 'your love for the people swinging empty as bottles after the glass is broken after the beatings after the confessions the disappearances the slashed tongues and cracked skulls' can mean."
"Iron Goddess of Mercy is one of the least traditional books of poetry I’ve ever read. It’s a single long poem presented in sixty-four fragments—each a solid 1-2 page chunk of text—to honor the hexagrams of the I Ching. Every fragment closes with a haiku, a characteristic borrowed from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing. There are lots of internal rhymes and wordplay ('Dear Dolly, gosh golly implicated in the hog’s holly clearing brush for democracy’s prop prop propolis...'). Almost everything is reference to pop culture and politics and history, all at once. Most of the text is made up of long sentences with little to no punctuation and, in some fragments, no capitalization, either. It’s the kind of book you go into fully expecting not to understand everything that is said...
Except—I kind of love this book. It’s relentless and strange and encompasses so much, from the history of Hong Kong to Ancient Greek mythology to Black, Indigenous, and Asian movements. I like to imagine that this poem is a distillation of what it means to be huáqiáo, overseas Chinese: Michael Jackson and Moana and the Moon and magic and a machine all coexisting at once in every possible permutation inside you, inside these sentences. Even when I don’t fully know or understand what Larissa Lai is referring to, I can read out loud and enjoy the way she makes sounds run into each other and bounce apart. I can picture the 'octopus wav[ing] its metro card at the South China Morning Post conceding to PRC propaganda' and laugh. I can sit and ponder the many things 'your love for the people swinging empty as bottles after the glass is broken after the beatings after the confessions the disappearances the slashed tongues and cracked skulls' can mean."
March 14, 2025
“What’s sweet when queer hangs gender on the winter laundry line?”
“Crows take us further than telephone lines teach birds to swim and fish to fly doctor the squalor of order to reveal an older order beneath, bequeath the go of the flow to the moon ones, the womb ones and tomb ones we women shimmer in the dim gestating a softer light that permeates concrete illuminating the tooth of illusion.”
A masterpiece of modern poetic epic. I recommend reading it aloud. Some of it flew over my head, I’m sure, but this is a piece so dense with quality that what I managed to catch was enough. The style and structure remains consistent through the whole book, so if you’re unsure, give the first few chapters a try. Not for everyone I’m sure, but for me, life-changing.
“Crows take us further than telephone lines teach birds to swim and fish to fly doctor the squalor of order to reveal an older order beneath, bequeath the go of the flow to the moon ones, the womb ones and tomb ones we women shimmer in the dim gestating a softer light that permeates concrete illuminating the tooth of illusion.”
A masterpiece of modern poetic epic. I recommend reading it aloud. Some of it flew over my head, I’m sure, but this is a piece so dense with quality that what I managed to catch was enough. The style and structure remains consistent through the whole book, so if you’re unsure, give the first few chapters a try. Not for everyone I’m sure, but for me, life-changing.
March 28, 2024
Rants, raves, extremities, surrealism, colonialism. Everything you could possibly want in 21st-century poetry. Lai effortlessly strolls between the past, present, and future, communicating traumas and pains as well as joys and triumphs. I found myself lost in her words, both because of the style and Lai's storytelling. Wonderful collection of poems that you can enjoy without reading in a day, but also a deep dive is equally, if not more, enjoyable.
June 25, 2022
4.5
Did not love every poem, but loved most. I read them aloud which I found enhanced them since you get to really hear the rhymes/alliteration/etc. I found they sounded great and some of the word choices I adored.
Did not love every poem, but loved most. I read them aloud which I found enhanced them since you get to really hear the rhymes/alliteration/etc. I found they sounded great and some of the word choices I adored.
April 10, 2021
REVIEW FORTHCOMING
July 6, 2021
I borrowed this from the library. I suggest you buy it to give yourself enough time to look up the references.
May 26, 2022
INCREDIBLE VIRTUOSO PERFORMANCE 10/10
so many references
so many references
October 6, 2023
Having just made though my first reading, I was intriqued by the wordplay, use of rhymes, and the surprising turns (and twists) of phrases. Looking forward to discover more in the next reading(s)!
May 12, 2023
I read this as a part of a readathon, so I was able to read the entire thing all the way through in basically one sitting, which is a lovely way to read a book-length poem, especially one like this. These sentences build a propulsive momentum that makes it difficult to pause or stop. They carry an energy that makes it hard to walk away from, but also to simply step back into.
I loved the meld of Greek Gods & Asian cultures -- Asian here as an umbrella rather than a catch-all -- Hong Kong as a collision site for Western/Chinese/Japanese/world influences. I loved Lai's use of the sound of words -- there are haikus between sections but most of the work is more free form -- but peppered with internal rhyme and alliteration, etc.
I bought this basically on impulse because Arsenal Pulp was have a sale and I am so glad I did.
I loved the meld of Greek Gods & Asian cultures -- Asian here as an umbrella rather than a catch-all -- Hong Kong as a collision site for Western/Chinese/Japanese/world influences. I loved Lai's use of the sound of words -- there are haikus between sections but most of the work is more free form -- but peppered with internal rhyme and alliteration, etc.
I bought this basically on impulse because Arsenal Pulp was have a sale and I am so glad I did.
Want to read
May 10, 2021Psychedelic gobbledygook - I don't get it.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews