The poem uses repetition and architectural disjunction to showcase the relationship between power; resistance; the efficacy and pragmatism of self-restraint, very much in the vein of a succinct Dickinson verse. (First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –)
The poem shifts beyond the liminality of thresholds: interior and exterior, navigating physical, material, psychological, and even geopolitical spaces thus inviting the reader to critically evaluate the dangers of obscene spectatorship in the face of conflict and disinformation. It’s a clarion call to disengage with provocation through prudence, dialogue, and strategic calm.
Jennifer Robertson on "The Tiny Economies Of Restraint" |
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"Shangyang Fang's Modernist Sensibility Doesn't Read Like A Debut"
"A powerful modernist sensibility in Fang’s work makes it appropriate for a poem, 'Meditation on an Authentic China,' to contemplate Wallace Stevens’ jar in Tennessee with the same seriousness as an idealism 'convinced/ that with a stem of daffodil one could burn down the castle.' The old and the new, grief, loss, love, and a clinical ear characterize Fang’s progression of poems here."
via INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Ghazal Ali on Language as Form
"'Matrilineage [Umbilicus]' sprung from this unsettledness, not halfway into my first pregnancy, when my body ceased to be entirely mine. I came to the page eyes closed, hands outstretched to trace the contours of my thinking. I could not yet trace the face of my child, so I tried instead to touch each thought as it was born." |
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