If you like fermenting things, coming of age stories, and “green glittering in the moonlight”
The Symmetry of Fish by Su Cho
VIOLETS’ PICKS 014
Where I found it
So, poetry. Here we are. After opening a can of worms (sour gummi worms, my favorite) and realizing that there’s so much out there and I—14 issues into sharing purchasable collections not just individual poems across the internet which offers very little to the poet—have only touched the tip of a tip of a tip of the iceberg. 10,000 poetry books per year, give or take, are published in the U.S. alone. And I was caught in a flurry, a list of independent poetry publishers in Notion growing but not yet explored, when I decided to see what the big publishers were doing with poetry. Y’know, get a sense for the market, what the people who think they know it all think they know. So anyway, I was on Penguin Poets, the beginning of a multiple-tabs-for-days moment. On this page and for this book, a shoutout from Roxane Gay who said on Goodreads: “All hits, no skips.”
First impressions
The cover, with cover art by Michelle Manley, reminds me of the cover of a book I had read a few months ago, a fantasy novella called The Deep about an underwater society descended from slaves, written in collaboration with hip hop group, Clipping. And maybe it’s the upcoming release of my favorite Disney film when I was a kid, and a couple of major film blockbusters starring water but there’s definitely something in the water this year, don’t you think? Thing is, when I see it visually to represent something as broad as a poetry collection, I tend to gravitate towards the notion that water is a moody, festering thing, a thing full of feelings and memories and secrets. I think that’s why so many poets come back to water metaphor and imagery. I get it. 2023 gets it.
They said it
Language and lore are at the core of The Symmetry of Fish, a moving debut about coming-of-age in the middle of nowhere. With striking and tender insight, it seeks to give voice to those who have been denied their stories, and examines the way phrases and narratives are passed down through immigrant families—not diluted over time, but distilled into potency over generations. In this way, a family’s language is not lost but continuously remade, hitched to new associations, and capable of blooming anew, with the power to cut across space and time to unearth buried memories. The poems in The Symmetry of Fish insist that language is first and foremost a bodily act; even if our minds can’t recall a word or a definition, if we trust our mouths, expression will find us—though never quite in the forms we expect.
—From the publisher
A line to remember
When those trophies faded, she discovered her softness, the constant blush of skin, until she forgot what color she was to begin with —From “She Arose”
That’s too on the nose, but things on your nose are hardest to see. —From “Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana”
Plump fruit, tasting like all the sugar and sweat carried across oceans until everyone was satisfied. —From “Tangerine Trees and Little Bags of Sugar”
Back then, we wanted to be rappers or doctors, and now benevolent EDM DJs in Vegas. —From “My Bed Shakes and I Assume the Ghosts are Finally Getting Me”
My sister is confused. Wants a cell phone, a Chanel bag, an iPad, tickets to the Governors Ball. The list grows every Sunday. Crying, perplexed by wants she didn’t know she wanted. —From “Ode to Wanting to Run Over Other People’s Children in the Church Parking Lot”
You might like this if…
You enjoy coming of age stories, things that remind you of that in-between time in your life where you belonged nowhere. You might be reliving that moment even now. You remember “sticky rice paste instead of Elmer’s glue”, of learning how to peel fruit just the right way, of translating for your parents. You’re living in an all-American requiem of a dream.
This was the colour of…
Ocean water, murky and blue and full of memories. Food. Its textures and smells and tastes, ripe and fermented, bright green and pepper red: Kimchi, “sesame smell sprawled over the verdant lawns of the IMAX theatre”, the “fluorescent green bottle of Soju”. Bright and magical things: Tangerines, persimmons, Sungold kiwis, raspberries, and plums. The silvery pale shimmer of memories drenched in moonlight peeking through blinds.
Details
Year: 2022
Author: Su Cho (Dr. Su Cho), who tells the story about how she started writing poetry in an essay about friendship
Location: South Korea → Indiana → South Carolina
Publisher: Penguin Books
You’re reading Violets’ Picks, where every Sunday I take you through an adventure brought to you by a poetry collection. Here’s some other Violets’ Picks this month you may have missed:
