Remember to Wave

by Kaia Sand

Poetry. "Kaia Sand's REMEMBER TO WAVE maps the temporal palimpsests and traumatic political history of Portland, Oregon. Sand writes the seen and unseen city in the spirit of William Carlos Williams's Paterson, Charles Olson's Gloucester, or Barbara Jane Reyes's San Francisco. She reads the geography of Portland for its displacements, exclusions, migrations, disappearances, ruins, and hauntings. Sand 'Do we need our ruins visible?' The answer resonates throughout REMEMBER TO WAVE as poetry creates a deeply felt awareness of past and present injustices. In this profound and threaded mapping, Sand composes 'an ode of accretion'--a song of our ruins rendered visible"--Craig Santos Perez.

Genres: Poetry, Art

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 2010

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite living poets. I'll read ANYTHING Kaia Sand writes!

This book is a journey (actual journey), but I don't want to SPOIL any of it, and will leave that information for your surprise! But let me please share this marvelous excerpt with you:


what is left open
is left open

the birds' carbon bodies fly in the carbon sky
& skywriting is taxable
in this time I am alive
with you

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The delightful 80+ year old volunteer at school gave this book to me because she thought I would "get it." It's a good poetic examination of the internment of the Portland-area Japanese during WWII, the flooding of Vanport and also the drowning of Celilo Falls. The Expo center, where the Japanese were houses, and the site of Vanport are very near my house and I enjoyed how Sand linked the present day Max stops to the history of the area.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chorography and Counter-Chronology -- a historical derive through a corner of Portland that is also posed as a possible future for many localities and peoples flood, displaced, and housed in junk. Traces of the internment of thousands of Japanese citizens into a precariously situated camp, its subsequent flooding & water that doesn't flow cleanly to the ocean but makes toxic ppl, women, the kids they feed with themselves. See Craig Santos Perez, see also S Howe & Rosmarie Waldrop (Key to the Language of America), & James Yeary (for the attempt to represent the graphical texture of the walk--signs, stuff, overheard speech). It's in line w/Maximus too but I think there's a difference between chorography & epic a la Helgerson in that the chorography gives a district or local an organization, voice an epic constitutes a larger body/nation constituted in action -- and Olson sometimes put his America in action, made it the hero of a voyage. He's a tipping point, I think. Whitman aggregating nation--everything is swept into the flow of his lines; the circuits of these derives seem to disaggregate local from national. O gross I'm failing to do a local reading. What I mean is, I admire the method, innovation, closeness of the circuit. Goes on the bookshelf between C Sandburg and A Robinson. Yay Kaia.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mining the records of north Portland from the 1940's,
and tramping through it--overgrown brush and all, this poet/reporter documents, with facts and collages and
words and photos, the human and inhuman uses of the area
where local Japanese-Americans, and (in their turn) Vanport
residents played out scenes very unlike the trade shows
and commercial storage (of PODS, among other things)
that identify the area now. It's a manual for how to
explore it for yourself, with directions on how to get
there, on Trimet, from either PDX or the Portland Amtrak
station. ("To arrive at this poem, please fly to Portland
International Airport and...")

[Dean Oken · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique melding of multimedia poetry and history

[Dusie Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here, the poet (Sand) crosses into new genre or territory of poet toward that of poet-journalist. Remember to Wave should be read as testimony, a position of witness in a time the world we live in simply want to forget. Tracing the city on foot, Sand unveils the lost story, a story that is told more through the landscape of archives as it is through the contemporary retelling of the Japanese-American POW camp experiences, and subsequent devastation of a people and culture. An incredible beauty is also unveiled in the city’s foot-journey and Sand’s mapped coordinates, and it is this: Every city needs a poet like Sand. In her own way, Sand challenges every poet to take on the city in which they live and perhaps bear the witness or voice of those that can no longer tell the story.
(from Third Factory Attention Span Theatre 2010)

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is a great work, especially if you live in or know the Portland area, but even if you don't. Discusses Japanese internment in Oregon, the Vanport flood and also includes historical documents woven into the pieces. Glad I found it.

[Erik Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

subprime
landgrab
meltdown

free speech ends when I call
fire in a crowded theater

but there is a fire

a burn is full of feeling
& it is in this time
I am alive
to love you