Anon

by Sophia Terazawa

A collection of love poems addressed to an adverb, Anon meditates on the temporal phrase akin to the feeling of two people, two languages, two migratory histories meeting “at once” between desire and exile.  From the playful verses of Tomaž Šalamun to the brushstrokes of “Two Gibbons Reaching for the Moon” by Itō Jakuchū, the arriving form of a winged Beloved unfurls a tapestry of longing despite our borders. In Anon , the voices reflect on linguistic possibilities of resilience against the silence of ecocide. Beauty becomes a source of touch and healing. The Mekong delta in Vietnam responds to the book's crystallizing force of Eros. Endangered gibbons swing from the ruins of colonial memory, and each image―rose, ape, and river―weaves into this current of music.

Genres: Poetry

140 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2022

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful poetry collection from Sophia Terazawa! I actually ended up reading through this one twice — once to enjoy the fluidity of the prose and a second time to understand the references. It's a really wonderful piece of work.

[Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll admit to some cynicism towards poetry world. There is consistent pressure for your poems to be working on a project. For grant money. For tenure letters. For job applications. A project implies serious poetry and it takes remarkable effort to attend to.

It’s also a risk. Which feels like something disregarded as a project moves forward. Sometimes the risk proves out. And I am an eager reader of those books. Though they’re hard to find if your main guide for new poetry books is work published in literary magazines. But the risk included with a project book does not guarantee its success. And that’s where my cynicism is located regarding the project book. Often, the effort and commitment is valued above the actual poetry. Rather than building a complexity of poetic context, the poems operate in a “supposed to” space for me. It’s “supposed to” be elevated, because there are these poems together. It’s “supposed to” complicate language, as the book’s full length complicates denotative and connotative notes. The book is “supposed to” uncover subtleties that could only exist in a broader fabric.

For my reading, Terazawa’s book operates in this “supposed to” space. I am unsure which inflection of Anon should serve as the book’s primary guide. I’m not sure what a poem repeating “anon” should suggest regarding the poet’s attitude towards that word (and its crystalized facets of denotation), and how that word might help me understand the poet’s attitude towards her subject. Significantly, I find it difficult thinking of “Anon” as an effacing gesture, taking out a lover’s name. There are other consistencies in the book that I am unable to find entry to. For instance, the gibbons, which the book’s copy signals as significant to the book’s vision, but even as something emblematic of the subject, I was unable to find poems that relate the gibbons’ significance for the poet.

I say all this with disappointment, not as some master of the project book. I have been in long pursuit of Terazawa’s work. But I just couldn’t find an entry point into the book’s larger vision. Even as I waited for it to emerge.

[Hannah]

I don’t really feel like I can rate this because I’m not versed in poetry and usually stay away from it. There were some lovely passages but honestly I didn’t really know what was happening.