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Storage Unit for the Spirit House
With sharp focus and startling language, the poems in Maw Shein Win’s second book, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, look through physical objects to glimpse the ephemeral, the material, and the immaterial. Vinyl records, felt wolverines, a belt used to punish children, pain pills, and “show dogs with bejeweled collars” crowd into Win’s real and imagined storage units. Nats, Buddhist animist deities from her family’s homeland of Burma, haunt the book’s six sections. The nats, spirits believed to have the power to influence everyday lives, inhabit the storage units and hover around objects while forgotten children sleep under Mylar blankets and daughters try to see through the haze of a father’s cigarette smoke.
Assemblages of both earthly and noncorporeal possessions throughout the collection become resonant and alive, and Win must summon “a circle of drums and copper bells” to appease the nats who have moved into a long-ago family house. This careful curation of unlikely objects and images becomes an act of ritual collection that uses language to interrogate how pain in life can transform someone into a nat or a siren that lives on. Restrained lines request our imagination as we move with the poet through haunted spaces and the objects that inhabit them.
Assemblages of both earthly and noncorporeal possessions throughout the collection become resonant and alive, and Win must summon “a circle of drums and copper bells” to appease the nats who have moved into a long-ago family house. This careful curation of unlikely objects and images becomes an act of ritual collection that uses language to interrogate how pain in life can transform someone into a nat or a siren that lives on. Restrained lines request our imagination as we move with the poet through haunted spaces and the objects that inhabit them.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 25, 2020
In this second, full-length poetry collection by author Maw Shein Win, themes of containment and solitary reflection stand quietly beside water, beneath a blue and pink sky filled with birds of many feathers. Through well-wrought use of figurative language, Win illustrates her mastery of the form. This collection brings to mind the idea that nature itself is both permanent and transient; the universal themes of gain and loss, community and solitary existence, the male and female elements contained in all of us: the yin and yang of life in all its myriad forms.
There are some repeated images throughout this collection that serve as signposts on the journey Win leads us carefully through; numerous types of birds who fly through the interwoven webs of words here, perhaps representing the concept of flight—both literal and metaphorical. Birds are especially interesting because they can fly, but they can also be caged. Images of caged birds are evocative of being trapped, and there are gentle warnings throughout these poems; they remind us of the tenuous cohabitation of humans and animals and the way they fit (or don’t fit) into the natural order of things.
Another image that bears repeating is that of the sky; vast and ever mutable; represented by colors (blue, pink, violet) and simultaneously both comforting and ominous. In addition to the sky and color themes, there is a lot of water imagery here. Water imagery is also universal, and could represent the womb and being in a state of stasis; it also evokes the idea of the vast, wide open sea and the primordial nature of large bodies of water, which can both sustain and threaten life. Win makes good use of color to evoke specific moods as well as to paint a clear picture of the natural imagery in all its splendor. For example, pink sky, something made of gold, the various colors of specific fruit; all of these serve to pull the reader into a world where everything is somehow greater than the sum of its parts if and when we stop to fully process them. Nature, the elements, violet light waxing crescent moon, blue linen; things found in nature like lavender, flower petals, honey, ants, stones; each thing so simple yet also so powerful, in that just reading about them can trigger feelings and states of mind.
As we wander throughout the poems in this collection, we see webs colored like blue light and pink sky. There are many mentions of the color blue, which often represents both calm and storm. There is a definite sense of melancholy along with a gentle celebration of the duality of life, like large and small, happy and sad, light and dark intertwined; day needs night in order to exist. At the same time, we are warned of the often adversarial relationship between humans and the other creatures that share a world: this is why “We wore bright colors to disorient the animals.” Throughout, we grow increasingly aware of the dichotomy of humankind and nature and their relationship: “lavender, dark, nerves, sky” coexist in tentative harmony.
While the macro themes here are of nature and humankind, there is also a micro motif of body parts and the inherently frail nature of our human vessels. Medical themes like the MRI machine the CT scan, nerves, spine, scars; all are mentioned multiple times. There are specific examples of gentle warnings throughout, such as: “Mind the maps of nerves” and the description of “coolness hardening into memory.” These phrases illustrating how physical sensation, if left unattended, can turn into esoteric thoughts; “the soft part of the brain fits into a clear jar.” This is a theme that runs throughout these poems, threaded themselves like nerves through the body of work.
There are also multiple mentions of eyes and eyelashes and many mentions of children and bodies. In the case of these; the children seems less to be individual children literally, but more indicative of the state of childhood, which can (and does) exist at any age. These images are juxtaposed with more natural imagery, but of a distinctly darker kind; “dead kitten in a box, bird in a cage;” these are themes of animal confinement; feral animal imagery connected to children and childhood. Mentions of actual animals tie to the themes of our (own and collective) human animal nature.
A number of poems written in the third person appear here, where the “she” seems less of an individual and more of the universal “she” exemplifying womanhood and what it means to be a human female in the current world. We are shown many images of women alone, but not lonely; fragile, but also strong. The marriage of opposites as it exists in the natural world is illustrated in the specifically female imagery throughout these poems. The images of women are mostly universal here, whereas the images of men seem to be more specific, as illustrated by the use of “he” or the "only son." It is as if we are being shown that there is a united and universal female that has always existed; will always exist: “She runs on four legs along the dry riverbed her mother sleeping.” The universal female is, as always, alive and well in the natural world; the girl that will always exist inside the woman.
By the time we reach the end of our journey, we have come to accept the concept of anthropomorphized inanimate objects, like thinking cakes and potatoes moving of their own accord. We have come to the conclusion that the universal and the specific can and should coexist: we have been warned of what could happen if they don’t. We have come to recognize, if not accept, that the two halves of a whole can exist both together and separately; as in the repeated imagery of a vase; a vessel open on one end and closed on another. The many separate yet connected themes run throughout these poems, themselves threaded like nerves through the body of work. Overall, Storage Unit for the Spirit House is a carefully crafted collection for the ages; one that speaks both to our respective, individual experiences and, ultimately, our collective spirit.
There are some repeated images throughout this collection that serve as signposts on the journey Win leads us carefully through; numerous types of birds who fly through the interwoven webs of words here, perhaps representing the concept of flight—both literal and metaphorical. Birds are especially interesting because they can fly, but they can also be caged. Images of caged birds are evocative of being trapped, and there are gentle warnings throughout these poems; they remind us of the tenuous cohabitation of humans and animals and the way they fit (or don’t fit) into the natural order of things.
Another image that bears repeating is that of the sky; vast and ever mutable; represented by colors (blue, pink, violet) and simultaneously both comforting and ominous. In addition to the sky and color themes, there is a lot of water imagery here. Water imagery is also universal, and could represent the womb and being in a state of stasis; it also evokes the idea of the vast, wide open sea and the primordial nature of large bodies of water, which can both sustain and threaten life. Win makes good use of color to evoke specific moods as well as to paint a clear picture of the natural imagery in all its splendor. For example, pink sky, something made of gold, the various colors of specific fruit; all of these serve to pull the reader into a world where everything is somehow greater than the sum of its parts if and when we stop to fully process them. Nature, the elements, violet light waxing crescent moon, blue linen; things found in nature like lavender, flower petals, honey, ants, stones; each thing so simple yet also so powerful, in that just reading about them can trigger feelings and states of mind.
As we wander throughout the poems in this collection, we see webs colored like blue light and pink sky. There are many mentions of the color blue, which often represents both calm and storm. There is a definite sense of melancholy along with a gentle celebration of the duality of life, like large and small, happy and sad, light and dark intertwined; day needs night in order to exist. At the same time, we are warned of the often adversarial relationship between humans and the other creatures that share a world: this is why “We wore bright colors to disorient the animals.” Throughout, we grow increasingly aware of the dichotomy of humankind and nature and their relationship: “lavender, dark, nerves, sky” coexist in tentative harmony.
While the macro themes here are of nature and humankind, there is also a micro motif of body parts and the inherently frail nature of our human vessels. Medical themes like the MRI machine the CT scan, nerves, spine, scars; all are mentioned multiple times. There are specific examples of gentle warnings throughout, such as: “Mind the maps of nerves” and the description of “coolness hardening into memory.” These phrases illustrating how physical sensation, if left unattended, can turn into esoteric thoughts; “the soft part of the brain fits into a clear jar.” This is a theme that runs throughout these poems, threaded themselves like nerves through the body of work.
There are also multiple mentions of eyes and eyelashes and many mentions of children and bodies. In the case of these; the children seems less to be individual children literally, but more indicative of the state of childhood, which can (and does) exist at any age. These images are juxtaposed with more natural imagery, but of a distinctly darker kind; “dead kitten in a box, bird in a cage;” these are themes of animal confinement; feral animal imagery connected to children and childhood. Mentions of actual animals tie to the themes of our (own and collective) human animal nature.
A number of poems written in the third person appear here, where the “she” seems less of an individual and more of the universal “she” exemplifying womanhood and what it means to be a human female in the current world. We are shown many images of women alone, but not lonely; fragile, but also strong. The marriage of opposites as it exists in the natural world is illustrated in the specifically female imagery throughout these poems. The images of women are mostly universal here, whereas the images of men seem to be more specific, as illustrated by the use of “he” or the "only son." It is as if we are being shown that there is a united and universal female that has always existed; will always exist: “She runs on four legs along the dry riverbed her mother sleeping.” The universal female is, as always, alive and well in the natural world; the girl that will always exist inside the woman.
By the time we reach the end of our journey, we have come to accept the concept of anthropomorphized inanimate objects, like thinking cakes and potatoes moving of their own accord. We have come to the conclusion that the universal and the specific can and should coexist: we have been warned of what could happen if they don’t. We have come to recognize, if not accept, that the two halves of a whole can exist both together and separately; as in the repeated imagery of a vase; a vessel open on one end and closed on another. The many separate yet connected themes run throughout these poems, themselves threaded like nerves through the body of work. Overall, Storage Unit for the Spirit House is a carefully crafted collection for the ages; one that speaks both to our respective, individual experiences and, ultimately, our collective spirit.
March 7, 2021
Memory, or mind, is a storage locker where the treasures and detritus of our lives live side by side and on top of one another. These poems are as delightful and puzzling to read through as it is to pick through a closet or trunk in search of one specific thing. The point is the sifting, the wading in, an exercise that always leads to wonder and discovery among the dust.
February 21, 2021
The way these poems were linked together through the icons/ images was brilliant.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews