The Ruined Elegance

Poems

Fiona Sze-Lorrain

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780691167695, 9780691167503
• eBook ISBN: 9781400873432
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

A lyrical collection that explores the interplay between poetry and history

In her new collection, Fiona Sze-Lorrain offers a nuanced yet dynamic vision of humanity marked by perils, surprises, and the transcendence of a "ruined elegance." Through an intercultural journey that traces lives, encounters, exiles, and memories from France, America, and Asia, the poet explores a rich array of historical and literary allusions to European masters, Asian sources, and American influences. With candor and humor, each lyrical foray is sensitive to silence and experience: "I want to honor / the invisible. I'll use the fog to see white peaches." There are haunting narratives from a World War II concentration camp, the Stalinist Terror, and a persecuted Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. There are also poems that take as their point of departure writings, paintings, sketches, photographs, and music by Gu Cheng, Giorgio Caproni, Bonnard, Hiroshige, Gao Xingjian, Kertész, and Debussy, among others. Grounded in the sensual, these poems probe existential questionings through inspirations from nature and the impermanent earth. Described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as "a high lyricist who refuses to resort to mere lyricism in order to articulate her experience," Sze-Lorrain renews her faith in music and poetic language by addressing the opposing aesthetics of "ruins" and "elegance," and how the experience of both defies judgment.

(IV)

CAUGHT IN DEFIANCE

TRANSPARENT

At first I’d forgotten

its color.

An umbrella that couldn’t open.

The aftermath of tears.

God’s mask:

a mangosteen with worms.

To turn this ruined thought

into a poem,

I took out four words.

INK PAINTING FROM THE JOSEON DYNASTY

Open the scroll, a book of dawn.

Across a canyon’s

chest, it slithers to a stop—

Cloud ship,

clear the horizon. It seals

like a scar, the wind

even. The next silence,

the next outcome

that fails.

A hermit waits.

A horse canters.

Mountain river thinks mountain

is river. Let ink. Let

air. A black

knife,

black tides of leaves

to slow a grave eastward.

If the moon struggles

in two stages,

unlock chakra with one eye

one finger. What comes to mind

won’t stay on purpose.

Best to dwell

on a pinhole of light.

You are the seraphim,

a fortress in green-blue,

blinking and falling

into wakefulness.

WHAT’S LEFT OF A SIJO

A stillness, a ripple,

a prayerful

instant. I wait

because you

feign movement,

thin traces of a feckless

existence. An antelope,

a noble surprise.

Wind rises, eyes

follow this idle

stanza

to a pavilion,

a civilization at

the heart of the lake

where I know

ripples are still,

white ginger lilies

hesitate,

and you listen.

CHIAROSCURO, 2 A.M.

after Gao Xingjian

The disappeared returns

in obsidian. Are there two shadows

or am I near? Rooms apart,

the window begins here.

There is still time. Look for transparence

in an after-gray, shore

and space undone.

Where light is old and exits twice,

a liquid rebellion along the line.

Let me ride this hour into the dark—

weary birds return to my eyes,

leave me in the wake

of mixed metaphors, circular

travels. The outline

of a significant guest wanders

into the basement. What glows next

but a veil of no interest? This,

the last ghost caught in defiance.

BONNARD’S NAKED WIFE LEAVING THE BATHTUB

Marthe steps into a world her body knows

too well. Never too roundly

exposed for a smile.

Her face, no face, transcends

yellow. Like a lightbulb with an umbilical cord,

trying to straighten its life out.

Combing pubic hair with two fingers.

White lavender blue, orange green striped hues

seducing an eye without restraint.

You must look at her breasts.

Hold that thought, can you—while

relishing? Pluck me, she suggests

in quiet and style. Like a ripe plum,

she waits for a hand.

Toweling off a silver experience.

Here stands a moment in praise of mundane details,

quotidian rituals,

an improvisation without circumstances,

body stripped of alteration.

Like you, I wish for more narratives.

A plot that unravels a grand finale.

But we know imagination

trusts best in permanence—

Dawn held at a windowsill.

Drama shadowed where her feet are tipped off

by canvas and Pierre’s calculation.

LA CHAMBRE D’ÉCOUTE

Magritte’s green apple, luscious and imprisoned,

bigger

than a life

stalled forever,

caught me off guard with the sun up.

Unable to think of sequence and relief.

Perspective, a musical task.

A second way to the absence

and the real.

Next to a window,

decided

on balance, the color mutated

into grand failure.

Out of proportion, birth...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• I. Wrong Epic
• II. In a Godless Time
• III. The Book, A Simpler Grave
• IV. Caught in Defiance
• Notes
• Acknowledgments