T. Liem, SLOWS : TWICE

 

Thesecond collection from Montreal-based poet T. Liem, following OBITS. (TorontoON: Coach House Books, 2018), is SLOWS : TWICE (Coach House Books, 2023),a collection of mirror-texts, with each poem corresponding to a counterpoint poemat the other end of the collection, until each end of the collection finallymeets, or even collides, in the middle. Through each pairing there’s an abstractof questions and how answers reveal themselves. Liem works through erasure,revision, reclamation, translation and transmogrification, exploring howstories are solved, resolved, morphed and recovered. “We need concepts more /than they need us so try again without me,” Liem writes, as part of “1985 –,” “andthe grandmother. It’s been done.” And, as the corresponding poem, “– YYYY,” offers,simultaneously:

Myliver my take So
donebeen it’s. grandmother the and
mewithoutagain try so us need they than:
more concepts need

Liemwrites amid and between categories of self and identity, offering each poemfacing its mirror, composing both staring at and through the other, whether as apair of straight, clean images or as two that blend and shimmer into the other.“language is change / changed by prosody,” Liem writes, as part of “THE SECONDHALF / FOLDS IN ON ITSELF,” “later an offer / a translation [.]” Liem writes ofexisting in that in-between of being, as the back cover offers, “divided inhalf, a charged division for someone who is often identified as such ethnicallyand racially. As each half unfolds, divisions of category blur – work andpleasure, night and day, home and stranger are reinvented.” “Maybe / one oftwo.” the poem “THE PAST” offers; further on, writing “Maybe / both.” A bitdeeper into the same piece, a futher fragment reads: “lexicon of what I hadbeen called / coincides with / lexicon of what I calls self [.]”