Under Glass

Gregory Kan

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781869408916
• eBook ISBN: 9781776710348
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A colossal jungle. Two suns. The sea on fire. If the mind were a place, what might it look like? Under Glass is an ambitious new collection by one of the most exciting young poets writing today.
Gregory Kan's second book is a dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker's compulsive hunger to make sense of things. Kan's explorations of the outer and inner landscapes frequently cross paths but leave the reader in doubt—this is a collection full of maps and trapdoors, labyrinths and fragmented traces. Under Glass opens up new ways of telling stories while questioning the value of storytelling itself. Beautifully crystalline and emotionally powerful, this poetry collection takes readers on a journey that is frightening yet tender, imperfect but triumphant.

On one side of the river is a colossal jungle, a green so dark it’s nearly black, and on the other is a sandy plain patched with tall grass. I follow the river’s straight rule towards the coast.

Here, there are two suns. The ordinary sun is in the sky overhead. The other sun is eating its way out from inside me.

I wanted what happened to be something

I could know

and I wanted what I knew to be something

I could describe

something to which others could say

I know this

this happened to me also.

At the back of the room is a mirror

dreaming it’s become itself at last.

I keep walking

as if I know all the parts

and could play them.

Today the world overwhelms me.

I feel a garden

growing in my mouth

and eventually touch stone.

I am afraid of appearing sentimental about sentimental things.

The things that are really big and really close

are too big and too close to be seen.

People are supposed to know everything

and when you find out that they don’t

it hurts for all time.

I can’t see any other feature of the land, just the surrounding trees, and the surrounding water. I don’t want to have to sleep here, the banks rotting into mud, the water thick with slime. The land writhes, and I writhe with it.

There are two suns. The second sun is hiding in the submerged roots of a nearby tree, giving me what I can get, the only way I can get it.

You thought that because you had less

you would take everything.

You always think about what you could lose

without really losing anything.

If you live in a mind

that destroys itself

to comfort itself

then I think I can understand

but right now I am tired of understanding.

I thought that the things I loved

were places I could always go back to

but the spaces between things become places themselves

and threaten to swallow me whole.

I thought that knowing in just the right way

would be enough to free me from pain.

For those of us who drowned,

and continue living underwater,

this isn’t heaven

but I hope we could come at last to love it.

I wake in the middle of the night. The ground is dry and sandy beneath me. I can hear the waves, even though I can’t see them yet. The thick canopy has given way to an expansive sky. For a moment, the moon bleaches ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Under Glass
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright