Swallows and Waves

January 18, 2016
In her third collection, Bohince (The Children) draws inspiration from artwork done during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868) to craft poems that deceive through their spare appearance. Each of the poems, none longer than 15 lines, works as both a rendering and an interpretation. The titles of the paintings feel mundane—“Golden Pheasant and Peonies,” “Rabbits and Crows in the Night Snow”—but Bohince’s quiet revelations shed a strange, sometimes painful light on what seems familiar. In “South Wind at Clear Dawn,” she likens an image of “stiff and untouchable” wind blowing through pines to a wife at her husband’s funeral. Though some descriptions feel expected (a “sumptuous kimono,” and an abyss that “whispers”), the ultimate effect of the simplicity is cumulative. The reader is lulled into hypnosis, barely removed from the artwork by the fact of the book. Rarely does one find a collection wherein the speaker seems almost unaware, or at least unconcerned about, the reader’s presence. These poems are intensely private, reflecting the quiet of the image being studied as well as the speaker studying it. Delicacy and agony have the same resonance, as in “Hairdresser,” when she writes “Where to go/ when the mother is gone./ All occupations form to replace her.” Bohince offers a discreet, surprising kind of ekphrasis.

Starred review from November 15, 2015

Inspired by scroll paintings and woodblock prints from Japan's Edo period, this fine gathering of short poems--Bohince's third collection after The Children--celebrates nature and court society. Ekphrastic poems set mostly at night, they often feature courtesans--"The stilled gold bell/ of his lovely body rang and rang until wrung"--and the poet succeeds in capturing the thingness of things. In "Tiger Licking Its Leg," for instance, she focuses on the tiger's "Three-petaled pink of tongue. Un-kissed/ perhaps since cubhood." She also describes the hazards of paying deep attention, "What is looked at too long/ reddens: blush of attention. Blood-kissed,/ audacious as sin." With each poem, Bohince first sets the scene through vivid description, then shows how nature parallels human lives. In the title poem, she says, "The sea/ has no shore. All middle,/ dense as middle age." Many of the poems dissect and examine the idea of love, viewing it from odd angles, as in "A Mother Dresses Her Son in a Kimono." "Her breasts/ retreat back to ornament. The romance of their first/ year together, milky nights in bed, quietly ends." VERDICT This collection of evocative poems brings to life a world long gone but resonant with our own. Each finely wrought poem reveals hidden depths upon rereading. One not to miss.--Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

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