 | |
| Author | Brandon Shimoda |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Nightboat Books |
Publication date | June 27, 2023 |
| Pages | 144 |
| ISBN | 978-1643621715 |
| Preceded by | The Grave on the Wall |
| Followed by | The Afterlife Is Letting Go |
Hydra Medusa is a 2023 poetry collection by Brandon Shimoda, published by Nightboat Books.
A hybrid book, Hydra Medusa features both poems and essays. Similar to Shimoda's previous works, the book concerns Japanese American incarceration during World War II. The book took three years to write and was born in response to certain events in Shimoda's family life, including his ongoing reflection of the death of his grandfather, Midori Shimoda. It also concerns the desert, a place of importance to Shimoda's own life, his loved ones, and his artistic influences. [1]
When asked about his reason for always pursuing hybrid forms in his work, Shimoda stated, "Hybridity, for me, is, less about form, more about emotions and the process of learning. These things (emotions, learning) are related ... When thinking about JA incarceration I become angry, bewildered, bored, depressed, inflamed, empowered, in love; each inspires a different approach to writing, form following affection." [2]
The book's cover art is a grass mantis drawing by Manabu Ikeda, an artist whose art was also featured on Shimoda's previous poetry collection, O Bon , from 2011. Shimoda stated "The mantis is an important figure in my life. For many years, especially in the desert, whenever I was struggling through a depressive episode, a praying mantis would appear, often on a threshold: a door, doorway, doorstep, windowsill, window." [2]
Publishers Weekly wrote that "This politically and philosophically meditative outing is a timely and memorable exploration of history and place." [3]
Los Angeles Review of Books compared Shimoda's work to the visual art of Cory Feder in that they both concern "the unlikely physics of dreams, emanating a flummoxing, mythical quality." The reviewer concluded that "Historical violence has a way of scattering narratives and people across time, space, and consciousness. Brandon Shimoda's work acknowledges this and does something about it." [4] The Poetry Foundation observed an airy quality about Shimoda's work, calling it "titanium-light" but still sensing "the gathered emotion" which "vibrates beneath each line". [5]
The Brooklyn Rail called the book a transformative experience to read, stating that it moves through different realms: life, death, and the interstitial, haunted spaces in between, "around you, below you, through you, behind." The reviewer also noted Shimoda's typical themes throughout his other works, namely that of the grave and its memory. [6] Similarly, Los Angeles Review of Books , in reviewing the book alongside Eleni Sikelianos' Your Kingdom, stated lauded the book for how it "seeks to illuminate the hybridity of living through the evolving terrors of the United States—in which the traumas of internment camps and border policies, and the systemic dismissal of such traumas, are co-animating forces hybridizing the same society." [7]
Cleveland Review of Books observed the way Shimoda used language in order to move backwards and forwards in history, connecting himself to the lineages of his grandfather, Midori Shimoda, as well as his other ancestors. Building upon Shimoda's existing body of work on the matter, the reviewer said: "The book moves beyond linear transmissions of trauma to showcase afterlives of Incarceration that are ongoing, sticky, even oppositional. In other words, the place from which Midori could not escape is that to which Shimoda labors to return, and within this inversion, Japanese American Incarceration becomes an almost paradoxical site of desire, even worship, into which the next generation dreams." [8]
Heavy Feather Review began with an observation of the prose elements in the book: "The essays of Hydra Medusa do what Shimoda always does well: write clearly and cogently, but with turns that take us somewhere we recognize but didn’t anticipate." Later, the reviewer noted the poetry's insistence on the desert, a place which Shimoda has lived in—specifically near Tucson, Arizona—as well as a place which has been written about in his previous poetry collection, The Desert. Of it, the reviewer said that, to Shimoda, the desert must be a place "of memory and survival" but also a place with "poisoned land and thoughts." [9]
Northwest Review remarked on Shimoda's approach to the perennial topic of life and death through his dreamy, hauntological passages, concluding: "Every line of Shimoda’s poetry, in my mind, represents the fruit of his diligent work unpacking this idea, such that each stanza is a brief flicker of clarity, and every space between words a deep breath intended to make room in time for his readers to savor that clarity." [10] Similarly, Alta Journal wrote that "In Hydra Medusa, then, reality is its own sort of dreamscape, in which time and space are less important than our connection and responsibility to one another, even across the great divide of death." [11] Poetry Northwest said "Memory, dream, witness, living and dead—all these elements become confused in Hydra Medusa. It is as if the world were being fed into dreams or the dreams fed outward." [12]
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, and criticism, and became the regular poetry reviewer for The New Yorker.
Wayne Koestenbaum is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He has published over 20 books to date.
John R. Keene Jr. is an American writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. His 2022 poetry collection, Punks: New & Selected Poems, received the National Book Award for Poetry.
Etel Adnan was a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. In 2003, Adnan was named "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today" by the academic journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
Caroline Bergvall is a French-Norwegian poet who has lived in England since 1989. Her work includes the adaption of Old English and Old Norse texts into audio text and sound art performances.
Cole Swensen is an American poet, translator, editor, copywriter, and professor. Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of more than ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and served as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. She taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa until 2012 when she joined the faculty of Brown University's Literary Arts Program.
Chad Sweeney is an American poet, translator and editor.
Eleni Sikelianos is an American experimental poet with a particular interest in scientific idiom. She is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.
Nightboat Books is an American nonprofit literary press founded in 2004 and located in Brooklyn, New York. The press publishes poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and intergenre books.
Andrew Durbin is an American poet, novelist, and editor. As of 2019, he has served as editor-in-chief of Frieze. Prior to his position at Frieze, he co-founded Company Gallery, served as the Talks Curator at the Poetry Project, and served as a co-editor at Wonder press. Durbin is the author of two novels and several chapbooks. He lives and works in London.
Muriel Leung is an American writer. Her work includes the poetry collection Bone Confetti, which won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award and Imagine Us, The Swarm, which received the Nightboat’s Poetry Prize. She has received multiple writing fellowships, and her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
John Barnie is a Welsh poet, essayist and editor, who was born in Abergavenny.
Jackie Wang is an American professor, author, and poet. She is best known for her books Carceral Capitalism, which critiques the relationship between the debt economy and racialized mass incarceration, and The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void, for which she was a National Book Award finalist in poetry in 2021. Her scholarship centers on the intersections of racism, liberal capitalism, surveillance technologies, and the political economy of prisons.
This is a list of poetry events and publications in 2023.
The Sunflower Cast a Spell To Save Us from the Void is a 2021 debut poetry collection by Jackie Wang, published by Nightboat Books. It was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry.
Brandon Shimoda is an American poet. He is the author of several poetry collections, including O Bon and Evening Oracle, as well as the memoir The Grave on the Wall. A professor at Colorado College, Shimoda is also the creator of the Hiroshima Library.
O Bon is a 2011 poetry collection by Brandon Shimoda, published by Litmus Press. It is his third book of poetry.
Evening Oracle is a 2015 poetry collection by Brandon Shimoda, published by Letter Machine Editions. It won the William Carlos Williams Award.
The Grave on the Wall is a 2019 memoir by Brandon Shimoda, published by City Lights. It won the PEN Open Book Award.
Emily Lee Luan is an American poet. She is the author of two prize-winning books of poetry: I Watch the Boughs, which was the recipient of a chapbook fellowship by the Poetry Society of America, and 回 / Return, which won the Nightboat Poetry Prize.