Threads

by Jill Magi

Poetry. "Allows observation, love, memory, confusion, and explanation to intermix and play"--Juliana Spahr. "Regions of cultural conflict and reconnection...the syntax that delves there is sincere and soft as well as gritty..."--Brenda Iijima. Jill Magi is author of the chapbook Cadastral Map (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), as well as several self-published handmade books. Her visual art, poetry, and prose have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket, CutBank Poetry, NEW REVIEW OF LITERATURE, AUFGABE, CHAIN, and Pierogi Press. Jill was awarded a recent residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace program and teaches literature and writing at City College and The New School. She lives in Brooklyn and is editor of Sona Books.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kerfe]

"Reverting to the original thread for the last--"

I expected this book to be more art and less text. That said, the sewn, altered, and collaged pages are beautiful.

And they complement the disjointed words, as the author searches for the path forward to and back from her ancestors in Estonia, as she attempts to follow their escape from Soviet occupation and their involvement with the Seventh Day Adventist religion.

Words, images, languages, translation, landscape, ceremony--Magi travels through many lost, missing, torn, and incomplete spaces.

"No lack of songs!

We left a whole heap of them on the road
a whole sackfull on the heath.
When we start to sing and let the words
run free then no reins can hold us, no reins
no ropes may bind us."

The journey always continues; it has no beginning or end.

[Val]

another read for class- interesting combination of text and image to tell a story through poems. The sewn and collaged images complement Maji’s disjointed thread from herself to her ancestors and her reimaginings of their journey to escape Soviet occupation.

[Joe]

Sows together fragments of modern Estonian history, the history of the Magi family as it immigrates away from war, including scans of original documents. Akin in some ways to Myung Mi Kim's body of work tho less fragmented, more dedicated to documenting and maybe Craig Santos Perez' books. New genre: modernist immigrant/familial/national mini-epic? I should like this and I do.

[Mark]

Magi makes W.G. Sebald's death a little less absolute.

[Brittany]

Phenomenal work, incredibly inspiring.