Pink Waves

by Sawako Nakayasu

A poem in conversation with literature and written during a durational performance.
 
Written in loose sonata form, Pink Waves is a poem of radiant elegy and quiet protest. Moving through the shifting surfaces of inarticulable loss, and along the edges of darkness and sadness, Pink Waves was completed in the presence of audience members over the course of a three-day durational performance. Sawako Nakayasu accrues lines written in conversation with Waveform by Amber DiPietro and Denise Leto, and micro-translations of syntax in the Black Dada Reader by Adam Pendleton, itself drawn from Ron Silliman’s Ketjak. Pink Waves holds an amalgamation of texts, constructing a shimmering haunting of tenderness, hunger, and detritus.
 

Genres: Poetry

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2023

About the author

SAWAKO NAKAYASU's books include So we have been given time Or, (Verse, 2004) Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (forthcoming from Quale Press, 2005) and Clutch (Tinfish chapbook, 2002). Find more info here: http://www.factorial.org/sn/sn_home.html

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Andrew Herman · Rating 2 out of 5]

just a bunch of nonsense

[Molly Duplaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

i ended up liking this a lot more than i expected; i’ll probably buy my own copy when i get the chance (this was a library checkout)

my favorite part of this collection was its form. it reminded me of (jazz) music, partly because it had sections labeled as A, B, A’ but also because each section contained recycled lines and slight adaptations that created a feeling of waves for me mentally, but it felt organic and improvised (even though this was actually really thought out and pulled from other texts). it was unique and i think a notable contribution to poetry as an art form.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you remember that first time reading Inger Christensen’s alphabet? How you could feel your body spread out, like it was a Fibonacci sequence of its own. And what was exciting was that there were rules to the poem’s building sequence, but the poem was showing you how rules can guide but need not overrule the poetry, even mathematical rules. Reading Christensen felt so good, because it showed poetry harnessing whatever the mathematical order might represent, then showing how it could serve a poetic energy.

All of that about Christensen is in second person, because people who have read Alphabet, people who tweet “Christensen’s Alphabet” to anything having anything to do with poetry, we all recognize something in each other. And if you recognize what I’m saying, I can’t emphasize how much you’re going to love Nakayasu’s Pink Waves. Because it echoes Alphabet, or it isn’t too hard to see it signaling over to Christensen’s book. And you’ll be delighted to watch it move in its own ways. Using Black Dada (mentioned repeatedly in the book), grief (mentioned in the end notes), the type of access white artists had to establishment artistic venues in the 20th Century (mentioned repeatedly in the poems).

The book-length project is clear. What I keep trying to understand in Pink Waves is the nature of sequence, where repeated lines and ambiguous ties from one line to the next may or may not sensibly connect the lines. Not that I need connecting points to guide my reading. It’s more how other books by Nakayasu (especially Hurry Home Honey) coach me to make the connections, to draw from a larger narrative frame around relationship and domesticity, to construct a more elaborate understanding of any given scene, but not necessarily an overarching narrative. Pink Waves, however, isn’t Hurry Home Honey. While Pink Waves has a frame to it, I would say it’s more a conceptual one—the rise and crash of waves, how that rise and crash might look if it consisted of language moving through the poet’s body.

For me, this conceptual frame encourages me to connect the lines, though often their connection isn’t immediately available. Sometimes they carry a hypotactic sense. One line is apposite to its preceding line, or it continues a sentence, even if the continuation feels light. And sometimes a repeated line inserts itself with remarkable timing, contributing to the the logic in that moment of the poem while also echoing from earlier parts of the poem (possibly even working against the logic of the moment, depending on how resonant that repetition). And then sometimes each monostich contributes to a paratactic catalogue of observations and incidences that might not present immediate connection, but the poem proposes an ambiguous sensibility that would place them side by side. How does this work? Why does it work? And it’s not that Nakayasu’s book is the only one that makes me think about this. But the method is used so effectively, and the timing feels so resonant, and I dwell there.

[khara rosebrook · Rating 3 out of 5]

“how will i locate expansiveness in touch”

early on in this book nakayasu introduces us to the word “confabulation,” which i came to use as a vehicle of processing her poetry. confabulation is a term for the false recreation or interpretation of memories, typically associated with neurological conditions such as dementia. immediately i felt connected to this term as a dreamer and a writer, and i noticed nakayasu’s iconic embodiment of the term—her monostichs are modular: she repositions (and therefore recreates, recontextualizes) terminology within compatible lines as an exercise in memory. though many motifs outlast across the landscape of pink waves, they never appear in the exact same way. they rewrite themselves.
nakayasu’s poetry is mood-based. she is specific not about tangible scenes but about intangible scenes. in the same way that other poets open and shed light over a particular bedroom, street, or bar, nakayasu opens particular parts of the body: the heart, the back, the mouth. maybe there isn’t exactly logic to latch onto; there isn’t exactly a throughline to trace—but there are feelings to glide into, and universal truths to blink into your consciousness. this book is really unlike anything i’ve read before, and i think it will make its way into the framework of my writing!

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

from Pink Waves
it was a wave all along
a passing moment reveals itself to have cued the long apology
i sat with a friend and the loss of her child
sliding between the heat of now and surrender
and then somebody holds your wild you
closer to the range
the specs of a body don’t reveal what it means, so which body do you want to wear today?
the extent that we need another dollar (14)
--
she was an elegy function; she happened at once; she pitched her loud voice to the waves (22)
--
what i fail to embody can be passed along, recycled (34)
--
was that you
or the genre trouble (40)
--
this may not appear that joyful bit it is joyful to have a word in this life to redefine the performance of a poem to change my claims, alone and together (64-5)
--
sitting on the banks of a new book i abolish your notion of beauty (68)
--
was it hardly a wave
collimation dreams of narrowing waves
the consolidation of my particulate odds
sliding between dreamlight and the way it rolls off
she was elegylight and circumstance; she pitched her light away
and bid you love
previous utterance catches in the memory like death
closer to the range, the table, the unrepentant tongue
English utters a line for the dead
and then somebody is mouthing my kick (93)

[syd kleinholz]

for schoooool. super interesting and unlike anything I've read before but I do feel like ? I can't really rate it / review it because I didn't get most of the references and it's so experimental?? anyway. I had fun.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

coolest reading and craft lecture I've attended. poems didn't resonate with me as much on the first read, but upon a second re-read and listening to the reading/lectures there's so much to learn and draw from this book and her work/artistic perspectives in general

[Abby]

I have no special affinity for conceptual art, and am probably missing most of what she’s doing here. But each line is load-bearing, strong and flexible enough to repeat again and again in different situations. To mean different things and always be breaking open.

[T Brown]

I could see the wave! It was as if the entire book was one poem. Some words were out of my vocabulary range but I really liked this. I cannot express my adoration at a writer's ability to craft a good ending. Cool.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

in 1960 the poem became a functional object, except not for most of us

[anon · Rating 5 out of 5]

LUVED

[Avalon · Rating 4 out of 5]

yes, i finally finished a book. ALSO i liked it!

[Ivan Zhao · Rating 5 out of 5]

mother mothers again. idk if i get the sonata form but this book is insane

[SeSe Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will need to revisit, good start to eschewing prose. Flummoxed after reading in undulations.

[suzumi]

havoc, waves, “arthouse”