An Aquarium: Poems (Paperback)

by Jeffrey Yang (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Yang's debut is as full of surprises as it is full of fish. Most of its 60-odd short poems, arranged alphabetically, take their names from aquatic creatures: Orca, Parrotfish, Nudibranch. Though he does incorporate oceanology and fish biology (Scientists exploit/ the mormyrid's unique electrical/ properties to test water), Yang also brings in Chinese classical poetry, Hindu myth, intelligent design/ and think tanks and political quips (The U.S. is a small fish/ with a false head). He is no less attentive to modern history and contemporary, Internet-based events: one poem praises the Italian revolutionary hero Garibaldi; the next explains, Google is a sea of consciousness. Another thread has to do with East and West—and the oceans between. Yang's pithy free verse insists on entanglements among the literary arts and the natural sciences, as among East Asian, South Asian, European and American literatures: Triggerfish includes Hawaiian proverbs, Catholic philosophy, comparative mythography and that inveterate comparer, the poet Ezra Pound, always testing the overtones. Those who read the collection quickly may find it witty but gimmicky; those who bring more attention will take more away from this rare first book that combines a simple theme (poems as sea life, the book as their tank) with clear, sharp thought at the level of sentence and line. (Nov.)
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Review

“If you ever need to remember that we live in outer space and all that it implies, go look into an aquarium. Or read this fabulous book that wraps eco-history into alphabet and weapon development and marine movement and actually proves that they are cooperating in the construction of the monster planet that we inhabit. Thrilling, scientific, mystical, clear, hilarious, horrible—an ‘aquarium’ in all its complexity: this very book.” —FANNY HOWE

“Jeffrey Yang’s witty, glitzy, erudite, and musical icthyographic extravaganza is the best bestiary since Lawrence and the snazziest first book in years. A starfish is born!” —ELIOT WEINBERGER

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555975135
• ISBN-13: 978-1555975135
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #372,154 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Very fine, April 25, 2009

By	Ted Burke "Ted Burke" (San Diego) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book's conceit, an appealing one , is to write a series of poems on the fish and other ocean creatures one would come across in an aquarium, in alphabetical order. It's a sort of involute indexing of whims and amusements that would soon get ragged with repetition in heavier hands, but Yang's touch is light , and varies his approach , creature to creature, and what his musings land on, of course, are continued inquiry into how we know the world.

We mirror, we model, we mimic, we claim credit for all the nobility that happens in domains that are, in fact, alien to our cities, countries and cultural ambiguities that Yang has the pleasure of gentle yanking our chain. As usual, the real issue isn't so much the wonders of sea life as exhibited--and the phrase ''exhibited underscores the problematic nature with which human languages address the external world as if it depended on our giving it narration--as it is something else altogether.
There is great appeal in the work of poets who can artfully contain a series of ideas in a brief piece of verse, the goal being to turn philosophical precepts into the glitter surface of a poem's allure and still address an issue quite beyond the more comfortable subjects of beauty or an aesthetically constrained idea of Truth, capital "T". Jeffrey Yang's first collection, An Aquarium (Graywolf Press) is a series of poems that at first seem like they concern themselves exclusively with ocean life; indeed they do, but the author is shrewd in seeing what other areas, outside the aquarium tank, these creatures touch upon. Yang offers up a view on how we think about things. Here, in the poem Parrotfish , the creature is nearly lost as the poems starts like the first sentence of an encyclopedia entry and quickly turns into a bit of cocktail chatter seeming between artists, secret agents and critics, all of whom sacrifice the subject in favor of extending their rhetorical devices.


Parrotfish

The life phases of a parrotfish
are expressed in colors.By day,
the parrotfish replenishes coral reef
sands, and by night spins
its mucous cocooned-
room. Is this art's archetype
abstracted from politics?
Picasso thought abstraction a cul-de-
sac. The CIA loved Abstract
Expressionism. Hockney: "I
don't think that there is really such a thing
as abstraction." Langer:"All genuine art
is abstract."
What do you think parrot-
fish?


I think the aim is to undermine the insidious intent of rhetorical questions that frame ready made political assumptions. The question in "Is this art's archetype abstracted from politics" forces agreement from the reader though it's disingenuous appeal to a person's vanity, from which an argument may be made for agendas that have little to with art, parrot fish, or life in general. This is the use of language that treats the things in nature as if they were symbols, real or potential, for great oppositions at war in an unseen metaphysical realm.
Yang seems aware that there is a very human tendency to regard the world outside our senses as though it were a linear narrative being played out, with virtues reducible to good v evil, beauty v vulgarity, honesty v criminal intent being the principle extremes in play. The narrative form , the storyline, is a convenient way of making the raw experience comprehensible, but taking a cue from Heidegger's work in phenomenology, Yang would have us be aware that the parrot fish and its environmental niche are not abstractions of anything but rather expressions of their own life. "Back to the data", as the man said and, in the choice phrase of the confounding Ezra Pound ,"the natural object is already the adequate symbol".


He follows the erring assumptions to an unusual but logical conclusion: the symbol of beauty and abstraction must surely be brilliant intellectually, and so must, by default, have an opinion of the matter. He places us in witness to an absurdity: intelligent men, seduced by their nuanced sophistry, asking a fish for an informed opinion.
Yang seems to me to be making fun of the way we call things either "beautiful" or "abstract"; for all the sophisticated and nuanced reasons critics, theologians and agents of intrigue approach the subject, the competing philosophies all fall short, far short of articulating something truly tangible. The irony is that the embodiment of all this speculation, the lexicon-heavy guess work to a thing's essence, is not aware that it is beautiful, abstract, or is somehow an embodiment of a set of ideas that are meant to change the world. The parrot fish isn't even aware that it's a parrot fish, which is entirely the point--it is too busy being part of the the rest of it's underworld. Unlike human beings, who are continually trying to separate themselves from nature so that they may subjugate it a little more


Thrive as we might,we are lost in our self-consciousness and cherish the sort of autonomy one might perceive in the creatures swimming their currents, inhabiting their niches, living survival and death in the same fluttering of a gill. But beyond this, Yang streamlines his erudition--these aren't lectures, these are lyrics that are broadened or collapsed as the idea determines. An admirable effort by a writer with a composer's ability to embrace ambiguity of form with a coherence of flow.
at 10:45 AM 0 comments Links to this post

5.0 out of 5 stars Using the vehicle of fish, Yang's poetry translates its goal well, February 9, 2009

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

A man who has made a career out of working with poetry, "An Aquarium" is a chapbook of poetry from translator and poet Jeffrey Yang. Using the vehicle of fish, Yang's poetry translates its goal well, providing excellent verse. "An Aquarium" is worth the investment for poetry fans. "Remora": R is for Remora, for: 'The mightiest power/does not always prevail. A ship/may be detained by a small remora',/quotes Borges of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo's/Political Emblems (1640).