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UNION!
Poetry. The ambition of Ish Klein's debut collection, UNION!, like that of the Soviet/Russian "Soyuz" space program it's named after, is to take us to another world so that we may better see our own. Klein traverses ocean, earth, and sky with spiritual longing as she compassionately describes human loneliness, and each poem is a love letter written to a civilization left behind. Here is a voice like "A spark from Hard Silence made mad," replete with yearning and fierce with mystery, and even as the poems teeter on the invisible line between wit and sorrow, each poem attests to Klein's "I sympathize with all the creatures in this story."
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 7, 2023
I'd read a later book by Klein and struggled some with it, but I still wanted to read this one. It's got a lot in common with what I made of the other book, but reading more kind of tunes the ear some. At least you'd hope that happens.
So, Klein is a weird, maybe unique kind of poetry, where the tension here seems to be that there's a speaker in these poems and that the things this narrator says are pitched in this slightly elevated/ artificial voice with a kind of childlike wonder or maybe that of a kindergarten teacher. The poems push against this voice, modulating what is says and how it contorts under pressure. So, in essence, strange monologues.
I sometimes struggled to figure out what the external pressure was on the voice, and a lot of the poems were too long for me to follow the changes in register.... I would start a poem and find it refreshing and weird and compelling to listen to this voice and then become more and more taxed until I couldn't quite follow those shifts. So, my ear is in training but still needs to work on its endurance. I wonder if I'd have done better encountering these poems in little mags, where there'd be just a poem or two at a time.
The centering of lines on the page here still freaks me out, and might be contributing to that kindergarten teacher vibe.
So, Klein is a weird, maybe unique kind of poetry, where the tension here seems to be that there's a speaker in these poems and that the things this narrator says are pitched in this slightly elevated/ artificial voice with a kind of childlike wonder or maybe that of a kindergarten teacher. The poems push against this voice, modulating what is says and how it contorts under pressure. So, in essence, strange monologues.
I sometimes struggled to figure out what the external pressure was on the voice, and a lot of the poems were too long for me to follow the changes in register.... I would start a poem and find it refreshing and weird and compelling to listen to this voice and then become more and more taxed until I couldn't quite follow those shifts. So, my ear is in training but still needs to work on its endurance. I wonder if I'd have done better encountering these poems in little mags, where there'd be just a poem or two at a time.
The centering of lines on the page here still freaks me out, and might be contributing to that kindergarten teacher vibe.
January 31, 2018
An interesting collection, teetering on the fantastical. Love, loss, ruined civilizations, and a touch of sass. A rumbling, insistent musicality and depth of yearning that kept reminding me of mewithoutYou.
October 1, 2009
I love this! For some reason I feel way less comfortable summing up someones poetry (especially since I know them) than I do fiction but this little book is crammed with powerful imagery, drenched with disaffection and adventure, and hits close to home. Ish Klein's my hero.
February 26, 2009
I love this book. Ish Klein is a genius.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews