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And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight
Part protest against reality, part metaphysical reckoning, part internationale for the world-historical surrealist insurgency, and part arte povera for the wretched of the earth, Lynn Xu's book-length poem, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight, holds fast to our fragile utopias. Under the auspice of birth and the contingency of this beginning, time opens: ecstatic, melancholy, and defiant, the voices of the poem flicker between life and death, gorgeous and gruesome, visionary and intimate.
- GenresPoetry
192 pages, Paperback
Published April 19, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 2, 2022
I'm biased, but this is my favorite book.
October 30, 2024
Cleansing w the force of an incantation, feminine fleshiness in struggle w masculine abstraction. The bodily stuff and numbers were a cool combo. Numbers are fleshy!
December 28, 2022
"and the angel
that presided over my birth
sd: Little Creature formed of Joy
and Mirth--go Love
without the help
of any Thing on Earth"
that presided over my birth
sd: Little Creature formed of Joy
and Mirth--go Love
without the help
of any Thing on Earth"
December 14, 2024
To me, Lynn Xu’s book is a journal of a first-time possession, as those described by
Nathaniel Mackey in his essay in the form of Spanish Deep Song and diasporic Yoruba
Spirituality. I actually spent two years going to a Yoruba-Baptist Church (Trinidad and Tobago)
in Brooklyn and have done a lot of personal research into Duende/ Deep Song, so I’d like to
merge my experiences with the reading materials in my reflection to come.
In terms of setting/ timeline, Xu’s book very much reminds me/ aligns with the order of
events of Baptisms in the Yoruba-Caribbean diaspora. First, it is important to note that Mackey
uses the word “possessions” in a colloquial way, to make it clear to those of us outside these
religions what these spiritual manifestations look and feel like, but people in these churches don’t
see these as possessions. These are not passive acts of evil spirits taking over unsuspecting
bodies like in ghost films. Church goers see these as active manifestations of spirits into their
bodies, which they have to endure intense hardship and spiritual might to invite in. I like
Mackey’s relating of possessions to deep song and having duende because it is true, a person
must have a deeply troubled spirit to be able to allow a spirit in.
The first event every church goer must go through to manifest (I am dropping the P word
from now on) is to get baptized. The baptism at the Yoruba-Baptist church I went to looks like
this: On Friday the candidate comes in for evening mass, where they are blindfolded with
multiple bandages, each representing a god/ spirit, and named Zero. They stay in a room in the
church until Sunday, in complete blindfolded-blindness, without food, until Sunday afternoon,
when they are brought out during afternoon mass for different rituals, all while still blindfolded.
Depending on the candidate, the first manifestation happens here, covered in sweat and Florida
Water, in a delusion from hunger and intense drumming. The church then drives to Coney Island,
and Zero is brought out for the last ritual of removing the blindfolds and entering the ocean.
All that is to say, the black pages in Xu’s book are what I imagine goes on in the head of
someone blindfolded for a weekend. The warping of time: “It was midnight/ noon/ and also
midnight.” and the irrelevance of space: “She is floating/ and I float with her/ in the middle of
nothing.” And towards the end she sees and speaks the main reason for Baptism, a rebirth under
the hand of God: “Today/ this very first moment/ through which life passes/ unprotected/ by its
beginning.” That “beginning” being something intensely spiritual she feels, which church goers
would describe as God, and which she then proceeds to touch. That touch is important, because
the solitude ends, and she starts to hear poetry (akin to the Sunday drumming rituals) which leads
her into manifestation in the white pages.
Before I get into the white pages, I want to focus a bit on the three quotes the speaker
hears at the end of the blindfolds, the first by Cesar Vallejo, the third by Lorca. Both poems she’s
quoting have remarkable duende, with intense feelings of longing and the shadow of death
inseparable in the voice of the speakers. They also foreshadow, or explain, her fear of numbers in
the coming pages. In Vallejo’s poem, the longing he feels for the “coral reef he was born in” ends
at a mysterious 1 o’clock:
Y las manitas que se abarquillan
asiéndose de algo flotante,
a no querer quedarse.
Y siendo ya la 1.
The little hands make themselves floating boats because they don’t want to stay, since it is now 1
o’clock. Xu chooses a quote earlier in the poem, before the 1 o’clock brings death to Vallejo’s
coral town: “The eyelids are closed, like, when we are born, forever is not a time yet.” And for
Lorca’s quote Xu takes a more direct approach at the number Lorca fills with death in his poem,
choosing the quote where the number 2 is “an anxiety and its shadow.” The number 2 is also
connected to women in Lorca’s poem, which Xu makes a part of her manifestation later. He says
in the poem “The dead hate the number two/ but the number two embellishes women,/ and since
the woman is afraid of the dark/ light trembles in front of the roosters...” Xu chose two of the
most gremlin-poems as spirits to manifest with. The second quote I couldn’t find the work it
originally is from, but it sees a death at 2pm.
In the baptism timeline, the break between the black and white pages is the candidate
being brought out to the mass. This is the most gremlin part of the book: hungry, blind and
shocked by the drums, Xu’s speaker manifests on the spot. The tone changes, and the language
becomes macabre spews, that of a person who has been to the darkest place within them and is
now possessed by the spirits of death. Here is where Xu’s writing finds its duende. “And flushed
with humanity I approached my mouth...” the speaker here is separated in space, capable of
combat with herself, “dressed like a woman, in the path of the coffins... living, as it were, no
more poorly than any other...” (99) deeply troubled, no longer sure of her woman-ness, no
longer sure of what separates life and death, and no longer sure of what makes her an individual.
Lastly, the postscript is the act of baptism. The cold water hitting her hot body, no longer
being a Zero, but having multiplied into godly purity: “And there/ just now/ is the totality/ an
infinitely delicate/ delicateness: my birth...” (170) The postscript loses its duende to let us off the
hook with the outcome of its intensity: that of peace, of understanding, of sunflowers and time.
This is the way I think the churchgoers at my old church felt after a manifestation, deeply
connected to God, to each other, and to the things they lost while they were with a spirit.
That being said, I think Xu’s book is not about getting to a point, telling a story, or even
necessarily presenting good writing. Like the Spanish audience listening to La Niña de los
Peines, this book is looking for something deeper, more sinister, more closeness to death in Xu’s
Duende voice. And although I compared the structure of the book to a Yoruba baptism, it is also
very much like a good flamenco performance. Even though Mackey describes duende as a skill,
and it very much can be, no flamenco performer just brings duende to every song they perform.
Duende is a product of deep song and saetas and other darker flamenco forms, and even the best
cantaora can’t be all duende all the time. Good flamenco performances, like Xu’s book, are
usually structured to lead us to that duende, first going through alegrías and bulerías and other
happier and/ or reflective flamenco forms. So it’s not just extreme, crazy emotion and the voice
of death that contributes to Gremlin Poetics, but the structure itself can also be a great tool to
lead us to feel that crescendo of tears and fear that duende imparts on its audience.
Nathaniel Mackey in his essay in the form of Spanish Deep Song and diasporic Yoruba
Spirituality. I actually spent two years going to a Yoruba-Baptist Church (Trinidad and Tobago)
in Brooklyn and have done a lot of personal research into Duende/ Deep Song, so I’d like to
merge my experiences with the reading materials in my reflection to come.
In terms of setting/ timeline, Xu’s book very much reminds me/ aligns with the order of
events of Baptisms in the Yoruba-Caribbean diaspora. First, it is important to note that Mackey
uses the word “possessions” in a colloquial way, to make it clear to those of us outside these
religions what these spiritual manifestations look and feel like, but people in these churches don’t
see these as possessions. These are not passive acts of evil spirits taking over unsuspecting
bodies like in ghost films. Church goers see these as active manifestations of spirits into their
bodies, which they have to endure intense hardship and spiritual might to invite in. I like
Mackey’s relating of possessions to deep song and having duende because it is true, a person
must have a deeply troubled spirit to be able to allow a spirit in.
The first event every church goer must go through to manifest (I am dropping the P word
from now on) is to get baptized. The baptism at the Yoruba-Baptist church I went to looks like
this: On Friday the candidate comes in for evening mass, where they are blindfolded with
multiple bandages, each representing a god/ spirit, and named Zero. They stay in a room in the
church until Sunday, in complete blindfolded-blindness, without food, until Sunday afternoon,
when they are brought out during afternoon mass for different rituals, all while still blindfolded.
Depending on the candidate, the first manifestation happens here, covered in sweat and Florida
Water, in a delusion from hunger and intense drumming. The church then drives to Coney Island,
and Zero is brought out for the last ritual of removing the blindfolds and entering the ocean.
All that is to say, the black pages in Xu’s book are what I imagine goes on in the head of
someone blindfolded for a weekend. The warping of time: “It was midnight/ noon/ and also
midnight.” and the irrelevance of space: “She is floating/ and I float with her/ in the middle of
nothing.” And towards the end she sees and speaks the main reason for Baptism, a rebirth under
the hand of God: “Today/ this very first moment/ through which life passes/ unprotected/ by its
beginning.” That “beginning” being something intensely spiritual she feels, which church goers
would describe as God, and which she then proceeds to touch. That touch is important, because
the solitude ends, and she starts to hear poetry (akin to the Sunday drumming rituals) which leads
her into manifestation in the white pages.
Before I get into the white pages, I want to focus a bit on the three quotes the speaker
hears at the end of the blindfolds, the first by Cesar Vallejo, the third by Lorca. Both poems she’s
quoting have remarkable duende, with intense feelings of longing and the shadow of death
inseparable in the voice of the speakers. They also foreshadow, or explain, her fear of numbers in
the coming pages. In Vallejo’s poem, the longing he feels for the “coral reef he was born in” ends
at a mysterious 1 o’clock:
Y las manitas que se abarquillan
asiéndose de algo flotante,
a no querer quedarse.
Y siendo ya la 1.
The little hands make themselves floating boats because they don’t want to stay, since it is now 1
o’clock. Xu chooses a quote earlier in the poem, before the 1 o’clock brings death to Vallejo’s
coral town: “The eyelids are closed, like, when we are born, forever is not a time yet.” And for
Lorca’s quote Xu takes a more direct approach at the number Lorca fills with death in his poem,
choosing the quote where the number 2 is “an anxiety and its shadow.” The number 2 is also
connected to women in Lorca’s poem, which Xu makes a part of her manifestation later. He says
in the poem “The dead hate the number two/ but the number two embellishes women,/ and since
the woman is afraid of the dark/ light trembles in front of the roosters...” Xu chose two of the
most gremlin-poems as spirits to manifest with. The second quote I couldn’t find the work it
originally is from, but it sees a death at 2pm.
In the baptism timeline, the break between the black and white pages is the candidate
being brought out to the mass. This is the most gremlin part of the book: hungry, blind and
shocked by the drums, Xu’s speaker manifests on the spot. The tone changes, and the language
becomes macabre spews, that of a person who has been to the darkest place within them and is
now possessed by the spirits of death. Here is where Xu’s writing finds its duende. “And flushed
with humanity I approached my mouth...” the speaker here is separated in space, capable of
combat with herself, “dressed like a woman, in the path of the coffins... living, as it were, no
more poorly than any other...” (99) deeply troubled, no longer sure of her woman-ness, no
longer sure of what separates life and death, and no longer sure of what makes her an individual.
Lastly, the postscript is the act of baptism. The cold water hitting her hot body, no longer
being a Zero, but having multiplied into godly purity: “And there/ just now/ is the totality/ an
infinitely delicate/ delicateness: my birth...” (170) The postscript loses its duende to let us off the
hook with the outcome of its intensity: that of peace, of understanding, of sunflowers and time.
This is the way I think the churchgoers at my old church felt after a manifestation, deeply
connected to God, to each other, and to the things they lost while they were with a spirit.
That being said, I think Xu’s book is not about getting to a point, telling a story, or even
necessarily presenting good writing. Like the Spanish audience listening to La Niña de los
Peines, this book is looking for something deeper, more sinister, more closeness to death in Xu’s
Duende voice. And although I compared the structure of the book to a Yoruba baptism, it is also
very much like a good flamenco performance. Even though Mackey describes duende as a skill,
and it very much can be, no flamenco performer just brings duende to every song they perform.
Duende is a product of deep song and saetas and other darker flamenco forms, and even the best
cantaora can’t be all duende all the time. Good flamenco performances, like Xu’s book, are
usually structured to lead us to that duende, first going through alegrías and bulerías and other
happier and/ or reflective flamenco forms. So it’s not just extreme, crazy emotion and the voice
of death that contributes to Gremlin Poetics, but the structure itself can also be a great tool to
lead us to feel that crescendo of tears and fear that duende imparts on its audience.
July 8, 2022
It's hard writing something about a book that you have anticipated for so long, but reading it and feeling there could be more. And by more I definitely mean more content, which would give me more context for certain gestures in the book. Most importantly, the role of the page-turn. The book is deeply invested in this poetic move. And I just want to know more. For instance, I'm intrigued by the opening poem's intense attention to the alignment of language (are Chinese and English congruent? Assimilable? Distant?) and what that might mean for this poet who straddles those languages. What is the value of language to this experience the poems speak to?
I can face the fact I might not be the best reader for this type of book. Books that operate on minimalism are not my preference. I do wish this book featured one of those 2-page introductions to draw the frame around the tight attention to language. Susan Howe's Pierce-Arrow is what I always return to for its introduction. The poem's on their own (like in her earlier The Nonconformist's Memorial) are difficult for me to connect to. But even with the thinnest of introductions I feel fully engaged in the entirety of the work. This is the opening I would wish for, or an interlude that would frame my view.
I can face the fact I might not be the best reader for this type of book. Books that operate on minimalism are not my preference. I do wish this book featured one of those 2-page introductions to draw the frame around the tight attention to language. Susan Howe's Pierce-Arrow is what I always return to for its introduction. The poem's on their own (like in her earlier The Nonconformist's Memorial) are difficult for me to connect to. But even with the thinnest of introductions I feel fully engaged in the entirety of the work. This is the opening I would wish for, or an interlude that would frame my view.
March 12, 2024
3.5 stars rounded down to 3
I’m a bit torn — loved the second half but not sure about the first half. Certainly, I might not be smart enough for this book, so take my review with a grain of salt. I can see that it is interested in the page turn, duplication/repetition, and tempo, but it was executed to varying degrees of success.
In particular, the addition/translation/language in Chinese was not particularly successful for me. The Chinese felt odd/stilted in some way, and quite a departure from the way that Chinese poetry can sound (which granted i don’t have much experience with). For some reason, I had the feeling that the author used Google Translate to translate the English to Chinese. Edit: I just translated some of the lines in Google and it spit out exactly what was on the page. I want more/wish for more when Chinese is used in poetry.
And yet, the language flows smoothly from page to page in the second half and opens spaces for how English can be used in conjunction with English.
I’m a bit torn — loved the second half but not sure about the first half. Certainly, I might not be smart enough for this book, so take my review with a grain of salt. I can see that it is interested in the page turn, duplication/repetition, and tempo, but it was executed to varying degrees of success.
In particular, the addition/translation/language in Chinese was not particularly successful for me. The Chinese felt odd/stilted in some way, and quite a departure from the way that Chinese poetry can sound (which granted i don’t have much experience with). For some reason, I had the feeling that the author used Google Translate to translate the English to Chinese. Edit: I just translated some of the lines in Google and it spit out exactly what was on the page. I want more/wish for more when Chinese is used in poetry.
And yet, the language flows smoothly from page to page in the second half and opens spaces for how English can be used in conjunction with English.
June 13, 2025
so so so stunning and wow i love that wave published this as a book. i will say.... kind of bizarre as a book
June 27, 2024
Wut even is this 🤩🤡
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews