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A House Made of Water
is a lyrical examination of daughterhood, womanhood, and Asian American identity. Elusive, but tactile, the collection wrestles beautifully with trauma and our inherited stories, seeking transformation throughout. What I love most is the intimacy of detail: the difficult weight of memory, the exquisite relief of disclosure. Michelle Lin's debut is a document of deep feeling, in the vein of Li-Young Lee and Sylvia Plath, but told in a voice entirely her own.
- CATHY LINH CHE, author of
Home in is mythical, cultural, and intimate. Michelle Lin writes like the daughter/exile of that home; someone both buoyed and drowned by its history. In one poem she conjures Aphrodite above the sea and the Little Mermaid beneath it. Another considers the various meanings of "chink." Lin fuses an outsider's longing and a native's self-possession. She is at once spirited and restrained. Her poems are stunning visions of homesickness and escape.
- TERRANCE HAYES, author of
In her titular poem, Michelle Lin writes: "For family, drag three dresses in a tub. Hang them up. Watch them fill with light." Such is the experience of reading : the poems here illuminate, with ecstatic precision and depth, the vagaries of family, alienation, the domestic, heartbreak, immigration history, and trauma--they swim deftly through waters "pearled/with grief." The language enchants with the poet's lyrical grip, elegiac yet alive: "My instinct with softness is/the same as any other's--to touch or/to smother. Let me hold you." These are haunting poems, and they are elevated by wonder, the permutations of pain and joy that make up the experience of living. Michelle Lin has crafted an astonishing, shapeshifting debut.
- SALLY WEN MAO, author of
In Michelle Lin's gorgeous debut collection, , we enter the language of the dream, as if dream-space could produce its own off lexicon, its own wave-like syntax. Lin's poetry is like a bright bloom after everything has been near dead for so long. If you want to be elevated, if you want to be transported away from the muck of the everyday and into what art can do--that bristling dimension--then read It just might save you.
- DAWN LUNDY MARTIN, author of
- CATHY LINH CHE, author of
Home in is mythical, cultural, and intimate. Michelle Lin writes like the daughter/exile of that home; someone both buoyed and drowned by its history. In one poem she conjures Aphrodite above the sea and the Little Mermaid beneath it. Another considers the various meanings of "chink." Lin fuses an outsider's longing and a native's self-possession. She is at once spirited and restrained. Her poems are stunning visions of homesickness and escape.
- TERRANCE HAYES, author of
In her titular poem, Michelle Lin writes: "For family, drag three dresses in a tub. Hang them up. Watch them fill with light." Such is the experience of reading : the poems here illuminate, with ecstatic precision and depth, the vagaries of family, alienation, the domestic, heartbreak, immigration history, and trauma--they swim deftly through waters "pearled/with grief." The language enchants with the poet's lyrical grip, elegiac yet alive: "My instinct with softness is/the same as any other's--to touch or/to smother. Let me hold you." These are haunting poems, and they are elevated by wonder, the permutations of pain and joy that make up the experience of living. Michelle Lin has crafted an astonishing, shapeshifting debut.
- SALLY WEN MAO, author of
In Michelle Lin's gorgeous debut collection, , we enter the language of the dream, as if dream-space could produce its own off lexicon, its own wave-like syntax. Lin's poetry is like a bright bloom after everything has been near dead for so long. If you want to be elevated, if you want to be transported away from the muck of the everyday and into what art can do--that bristling dimension--then read It just might save you.
- DAWN LUNDY MARTIN, author of
- GenresPoetry
100 pages, Paperback
First published March 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 28, 2017
Michelle Lin has mastered the balance between patience and power in this collection. More than once, a poem refused to let me leave it for hours. I was particularly haunted by “Sylvia,” but my absolute favorite part of this collection was Lin’s ability to carry the metaphor of water throughout without losing strength or poignancy for even a moment.
May 24, 2017
Really enjoyed this collection - especially where Lin veers towards popular culture as metaphor (Heavy Rain and My Mother as Mystique From X-Men were my two favorites).
June 1, 2017
A House Made of Water is a collection of poems that both constructs and deconstructs notions of house and home. At times, Lin's book feels more like a museum of abstract architecture with exhibits as varied as a dog/cat/bird, Greek mythologies, mother and Mortal Kombat characters. Symbols and themes appear as decorative motifs in this museum. You will find dentils next to moldings in several exhibit rooms: “intimate as the skin between her teeth” and “torn so easily by teeth and love.” The motifs of identity and value find their way into the symbolic figures of father, mother and grandmother. At one display, we see a grandmother who shows love by overfeeding her granddaughter sugary foods, the result of which is “the music of metal instruments and marked cavities.” Loss and emptiness is at once extracted and exhumed from this image and sound.
Michelle Lin's poetry reveals a nuanced understanding of critical and feminist theories, as well as eclectic interests in dreams, memories, mermaids and video games. Reading A House Made of Water is a most challenging yet rewarding experience for Lin's work is resistant to traditional narratives and simple resolutions. The poems in the volume lyrically move us from room to room, all the while challenging the notion that any room, wall or door exists in our individual or collective existence.
For the rest of the review, please visit http://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2017/0...
Michelle Lin's poetry reveals a nuanced understanding of critical and feminist theories, as well as eclectic interests in dreams, memories, mermaids and video games. Reading A House Made of Water is a most challenging yet rewarding experience for Lin's work is resistant to traditional narratives and simple resolutions. The poems in the volume lyrically move us from room to room, all the while challenging the notion that any room, wall or door exists in our individual or collective existence.
For the rest of the review, please visit http://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2017/0...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews