Aquiline by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, A Review

review by Suzanne Kamata

In reading the poetry of Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, I am reminded of the sometimes bizarre syntax in writing produced by non-native speakers of English. For many years, Joritz-Nakagawa has taught in Japan where English words often appear in advertising and other forms of writing. This writing is frequently nonsensical, and yet strange juxtapositions and mistranslations may give new meaning to words, or result in inadvertent poetry.

Although the poems in Joritz-Nakagawa’s recently released collection, Aquiline (which follows last year’s Skin Museum) may strike the casual reader as nonsensical or incomprehensible, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that her choice of words is anything but inadvertent. She styles language into poems that force us to reconsider our preconceptions and that address many of our most immediate concerns.

For example, “dead,” which initially appeared in Her Circle Ezine, brings to mind the ravages of war, while “View from the Century Hyatt Hotel Tokyo” addresses the issue of homelessness. “Grey men in blue vinyl/ tents” are observed from a position of privilege and luxury. In “She,” the “bruises & large white sunglasses like/Jackie O” call up a battered woman.

“Evil Nature,” a four-part poem that comprises the core of this book, broods on human violence against nature, which has in turn made nature a menace to humankind. Instead of a nurturing Mother Nature, a haven of beauty and clean air, we now have “mechanic constellations” and “emotionally unavailable trees” along with “birds headed in the wrong direction” and “serial killing cloud.”

While her subjects may remain serious, Joritz-Nakagawa obviously takes delight in language, and reveals a sense of playfulness in her various experiments. In S.P. 1 and S.P. 2, she rearranges lines from poems by Sylvia Plath, coming up with “a crocodile of small girls.” “Evil Nature 4″ mixes the ideograms for cloud, forest, mountain and rain with suggestive phrases such as “To banish now the kiss, ancient.”

Experimental poetry is clearly not for everyone, but for those who are interested in expanding the limits of language, Joritz-Nakagawa is a poet worth reading. At turns stunning and shocking, Aquiline is an accomplished collection.

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Suzanne Kamata is the author of Losing Kei and the editor of the anthologies The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs.