"The Last Incantations," by David Mura. (TriQuarterly Books, 140 pages, $16.95.)
In his novels, memoirs and poetry, David Mura is known for writing from the point of view of a Japanese American. "The Last Incantations" includes poems about internment camps, struggles of immigrant families and what it's like to be the exotic Other.
However, the volume begins on Sea Island in South Carolina, where runaway slaves "hid … scions of / a tongue they kept alive for their own." There the speaker tells his sons "a history we can't take back."
The history that haunts Mura's poetry is one of intersections, shared legacies of violence, confinement and brutality. He writes of "The barbed / wire of Ramallah, the barbed / wire of Heart Mountain, the guard / towers here, the borders for Bantus / and Gaza." (Heart Mountain is where Mura's parents were confined during World War II.)
His form mirrors the complexity of his subjects; he mixes poetry and prose, blending biography, cultural criticism and memoir. He crafts lyric images with attention to sound ("how skin / simmers as / summer enters / strawberries ripen"), then comments that an author "denaturalizes Japanese society, even though he's Japanese."
This makes for emotionally and intellectually engaging work that asks the reader to reconsider conceptions of race. Unfortunately, some explanatory notes are printed out of order, so readers may struggle with references.
Mura's work is driven by the potent urgency of "knowing / my dark face and slanted eyes, / like no one / in my hometown, must sing this silence / of cages, amnesia, orchids, angels and mud."
"Rancho Nostalgia," by James Cihlar. (Dream Horse Press, 100 pages, $17.95.)