Jane Shi, echolalia echolalia

I’m intrigued by the long sentence, sentences, that stitch together toform Vancouver poet Jane Shi’s full-length debut, echolalia echolalia (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2024), a collection that follows her debut chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Vancouver BC: Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022). Stretchingacross the length and breadth of the one hundred and twenty compact pages ofher debut collection, hers is a remarkable extended thought across lyricmeditation and formal invention writing the body, loss, nostalgia and layers notsimply reconsidered, but recycled, repurposed. “a tide-pool winter a hiss / ofhot violets little fibres / along my bedspread brush of threaded grass / in thegrubby broken cinema of memory scrub / my back filthily in the thick sublunarylust / starts would make canyons o me the vast valleys / airless marshes wheretravellers stumbled,” she writes, to open the poem “worship the exit light,” apoem subtitled “A found poem created / from my wordpress poetryjournal / of my late teens (2008-2016) [.]”

Across five sections of lyrics that offer visual and language play—“UnreliableNarReader,” “griefease,” “picture/que,” “TheOrganization” and “ECHOLALIA AS A SECOND LANGUAGE”—Shi offers poemsas declaration, observation, visual reference, restraint and expansive gesture,study notes; as points of clarity, both to the reader and herself. “You offerto run him over with your wheelchair.” begins the poem prose sequence “I’llDial Your Number,” a sequence that counts down in reverse order, starting withfive. “I come to you deceived and smelling of fish oil. You pat my back withyour hospital-gown grin. It’s so soft I cackle. I cough him out tat the rate ofdecomposing newspapers.” Her lyric is delightfully witty, even absurd, and subversive,articulating through her exploratory gestures an underlying loss that layers,ripples, the more one moves away from those points of origin. Listen, forexample, to the opening of the poem “then you put missing them in your calendar,”that begins:

after tax season you stare at the gingko leaf lines ofyour excel sheet. long bridges dull linger of lullabies. until. you pause ateach last lantern lit desk doorknob dusk grip laptop foxglove-covered drawer. openit to sort through documents you were too tired to sort through last winter. returnto each drawstring/word dock/sticky note: another year, gone. smoke insong-shadow, milk candle rehearsal. you light things up to shimmer chimney whatthey’ll say when they hear you. you light things up till your steps are in stepwith theirs through history’s afterword.

These are such lovely visual and gestural sweeps, such as the poem “Iwant to face consequences,” which begins with and leads into such an expansive swirlacross the page, one of a number of such she composes throughout: “17 / years /old, and / still throwing / tantrums, the suburban / problem so specifically /misdiagnosed / as the problem / of picky eating, on a sunday 10 / years latershe’ll check / into a resignation hostel, become / an audible ghost, beckon amake-believe / social worker to arrive at her pillowside like a tooth / fairy.”There’s a coming-of-age or coming-into-being element to these poems, but onefar more self-aware and wry, more playful, than most examples I’m aware of,providing a sense of exploration and wonder, collaging observation withcultural and pop culture references, and what one carries no matter where one lands,such as the poem “is it literature or deforestation?,” that includes:

you imagine her in the faces of others: you see themogui of race in the crowds of this too-Asian campus: so you emptied yourselfof what they saw as competition: remaining useless so you no longer neededneeding: years later he will Gwen Stefani another sidekick: she will have thesame name as you: will get another chance to pay respects: stilling a compassof coincidence: had a knife fight in the Uwajimaya parking lot: not a shell(not a shell): you belong to shoe polish: you belong to gavel polish: goodbye2014: your legs froze: your throat thawed: you ripped up their contract: refusedto take hush money: god/dess of mercy smiling through the paragraphs: ghosts: historians:hesitations: scrawled hi: hello: the caramel salt sting: sigh: wont be long now