{"id":10457,"date":"2019-06-03T01:21:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T00:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457"},"modified":"2019-06-03T01:25:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T00:25:29","slug":"jenny-xies-eye-level-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457","title":{"rendered":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level<\/em><\/strong> | reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenny Xie | Eye Level<\/em> | Graywolf Press: $16.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The blurbs on the back of Jenny Xie\u2019s debut volume, Eye Level<\/em>, include the New York Review of Books, Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker, Tracy K Smith and Brenda Shaughnessy. This first book has clearly hit the sweet spot as far as the reviewers are concerned. Dan Chiasson\u2019s comment ends by commenting that Xie\u2019s writing \u2018suggests a kind of Fodor\u2019s or Lonely Planet guide to inner life.\u2019 <\/p>\n

It is true that, almost by definition, travel writing is essentially about the journey around the self. The best travel writing is profoundly observant, its watching of the Other, careful and nuanced; but at the heart of that observation is a sensibility that watches its Self with an equal directness and obsessively calculates the distance between the two. In Xie\u2019s case, that calculation imbues this process with considerable finesse and grace. <\/p>\n

In Xie\u2019s case, that dialogue of Self and sensibility focuses, for the first third of Eye Level<\/em>, on what it means to be alone as one travels. Contained in that part of the book are both parts of \u2018Phnom Penh Diptych\u2019, the first part \u2018Wet Season\u2019 and the second \u2018Dry Season\u2019. Xie\u2019s achievement in the diptych is to offer Phnom Penh in a way which is evocative and alive, and at the same time to show the mind in the process of observation. Inevitably, perhaps that mind is the mind of a young woman as she moves through a world which is both alien and reminiscent of the world she has left behind. In \u2018Dry Season\u2019, Xie writes, \u2018I sweat over plates of pork dumplings and watery beer. \/\/ Can you fix this English?<\/em> \/ the Chinese restaurant own asks, pushing a menu toward me. \/\/ The men here chew toothpicks like uncles on both sides of my family. \/ They talk with their moths full. \/\/ I translate what little I can, it\u2019s embarrassing. \/\/ Just passing through?<\/em> \/ asks his eldest daughter, as she turns away to the fan.\u2019 <\/p>\n

This episode is presented in plain prose, and the effect of that lack of adornment is, I would suggest, to make it more real. The narrative is blandly and neatly organised. And the solitude arises from the sense that the world exists around her and goes on its own sweet way; that passage emphasised by the daughter\u2019s offhand comment placed at the end. Xie\u2019s use of short, declarative sentences is also characteristic of her style at this point. That style can sometimes feel like diary notes, as in these lines from \u2018Zuihitsu\u2019, \u2018Someone told me, before and after is just another false binary<\/em>. The warmed-over bones of January. I had no passport. Beneath the stove, two mice made a paradise out of a button of peanut butter.\u2019 The linkages are there in the emotions, but not everyone shares these emotions on the same plain. However, on the whole, the overall sense is of carefully measured disposition; the short lines pitch emotion onto the surface of the text in away that does not avoid emotional exposure. <\/p>\n

In the poem, \u2018Solitude Study\u2019, Xie muses on her need for solitude, \u2018Times when I think a mind uncluttered with others \/ is the only condition for gentleness \/\/ or that memory sticks like cartilage \/ to the meat of those with the most words \/\/ Yet I know we can hold more in us than we do \/ because the body is without core\u2026\u2019. Such musings seem appropriate for someone who is a traveller, where solitude perhaps enables fuller observation. And here another aspect of her techniques is a deft use of metaphor; a use which seems to exist just on the cusp of being precious, but never quite slips over preciousness.
\nSome of these poems are attached to stories of her own family\u2019s migration to the United States. And sometimes here, Xie uses the third person; perhaps this is because the process is very emotional, but also perhaps because the third person opens the processes out for generalisation. In \u2018Metamorphosis\u2019, for example, Xie writes \u2018Nowhere in those kerosene years \/ could she find a soft-headed match. \/\/ The wife crosses over an ocean, red-faced and cheerless. \/ Trades the pad of a stethoscope for a dining-hall spatula.\u2019 Xie is very good at this focus on contrasting details. Here, the person whom I\u2019m taking to be Xie\u2019s mother lives in a place with a primitive, kerosene fuelled existence as a doctor symbolised by the stethoscope, which is exchanged, in turn, for a primitive eating implement. Again, here, Xie\u2019s placing of the adjectives seems precise and deft. <\/p>\n

The fourth and final section of this carefully organised book opens out into a kind of poetry whose direction might take Xie forward in the future. Here, the introspection of the travel poems becomes more an investigation into how one sits within one\u2019s own life as a whole. Xie\u2019s method here is to take the short, charged comments which have enlivened the travel poems and shore them up one against each other. These poems show the mind storing impressions, holding them in a particular place and allowing them to refract one against another. Such a procedure may simply sound post-modern, but Xie\u2019s success is to select so adroitly that the final text feels attuned and complete. These are the final three sections from \u2018Margins\u2019, \u2018A monk brushes crumbs from the cushion. \/ In the meditation hall, the sound of bells. \/ Thinner than any keyhole. \/\/ * \/\/ Hard to tune \/ to the last decade of my life. \/ January, few visitors. \/\/ * \/\/ Each day mostly like any other. \/ the way you loved me, a cracked wind \/ hurrying me along.\u2019 As one of Xie\u2019s blurb writers notes, there is a fine, \u2018crystalline\u2019 quality to the poems in Eye Level<\/em>; both the realism and the mysticism of its themes and music feel warm and achieved. <\/p>\n

by Ian Pople<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Graywolf Press: $16.00 The blurbs on the back of Jenny Xie\u2019s debut volume, Eye Level, include the New York Review of Books, Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker, Tracy K Smith and Brenda Shaughnessy. This first book has clearly hit the sweet spot as far as the reviewers are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nJenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Graywolf Press: $16.00 The blurbs on the back of Jenny Xie\u2019s debut volume, Eye Level, include the New York Review of Books, Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker, Tracy K Smith and Brenda Shaughnessy. This first book has clearly hit the sweet spot as far as the reviewers are […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-06-03T00:21:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-03T00:25:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/i63.tinypic.com\/1zznej9.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457\",\"name\":\"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-06-03T00:21:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-06-03T00:25:29+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\",\"name\":\"Ian Pople\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Ian Pople\"},\"description\":\"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","og_description":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Graywolf Press: $16.00 The blurbs on the back of Jenny Xie\u2019s debut volume, Eye Level, include the New York Review of Books, Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker, Tracy K Smith and Brenda Shaughnessy. This first book has clearly hit the sweet spot as far as the reviewers are […]","og_url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2019-06-03T00:21:01+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-06-03T00:25:29+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/i63.tinypic.com\/1zznej9.jpg"}],"author":"Ian Pople","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ian Pople","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457","name":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2019-06-03T00:21:01+00:00","dateModified":"2019-06-03T00:25:29+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10457#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Jenny Xie | Eye Level | reviewed by Ian Pople"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9","name":"Ian Pople","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"Ian Pople"},"description":"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-2IF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10457"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10463,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10457\/revisions\/10463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}