{"id":7628,"date":"2017-06-08T13:45:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T12:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628"},"modified":"2017-06-08T13:45:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T12:45:33","slug":"mai-der-vang-afterland-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628","title":{"rendered":"Mai Der Vang, <em>Afterland<\/em>, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Mai Der Vang, <em>Afterland<\/em>, (Graywolf Press, $16.00).<\/h5>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px 10px;\" img src=\"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/2ir1wyb.png\" width=\"255\" align=\"left\">If the Hmong peoples of Laos have any presence on this side of the Atlantic, it may be in the unfortunate environment of Clint Eastwood\u2019s film <em>Gran Torino<\/em>, described by Timeout as the \u2018ultimate \u201cget off my lawn\u201d movie.\u2019 In that film, Eastwood\u2019s grouchy character forms a relationship with the Hmong family next door. In that film too, a female Hmong comments that amongst the Hmong in the US, \u2018the girls go to college, the boys go to gangs.\u2019 Mai Der Vang\u2019s first volume is, much like Ocean Vuong\u2019s book reviewed in these pages before, a book haunted by the American involvement in the Vietnam War in the sixties and seventies. Where Vuong wrote directly about the effects of the war, Vang\u2019s Hmong people were \u2018used\u2019 by the CIA in what has come to be known as the \u2018secret war\u2019 in Laos, to fight the Vietcong using guerrilla tactics. When the Americans pulled out of Vietnam, the Hmong were left to \u2018take the fall\u2019; a \u2018fall\u2019 which is described in graphic and poignant detail in the second poem of the book \u2018Dear Soldier of the Secret War.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Thus, when this book is dedicated \u2018For the Ancestors,\u2019 there is an understandable searching back for a kind of purity;  in particular, a purer relationship to land and identity within landscape. In \u2018Three,\u2019 that relationship is literally within the land, \u2018Grave guardian,\/ slumber with bones from now on.\/\/ You are closer to earth than the reindeer who buries his head\/\/ in snow smelling for moss,\/ nearer than well water,\/ closer than the fox.\u2019 There\u2019s a nice sense of the images reaching out from the dead to the living elements, and the movement of the couplets down the page seems delicately paced. <\/p>\n<p>There are moments, though, when the poems veer rather close to something which is rather precious. \u2018This Heft upon your Leaving\u2019 begins, \u2018I peel to the centre for the shape\/ of an answer to give you,\/\/ for the way an answer cures\/in wet resin\/\/ or can hook through the days\/ towards the pendulous\/\/ blink of your eye.\u2019 And there are hefty indentations where some of the line breaks occur. Clearly such language is highly metaphorical. The reader is, perhaps, invited to respond to the text in whatever way they find suitable. At the same time, however, that sense of metaphor is slightly either\/or; it either works for a particular reader, or it doesn\u2019t. And if the metaphor doesn\u2019t work, there is sometimes a sense of moving across a slightly facile surface, beneath which there is something that just seems a little far away.<\/p>\n<p>A better love poem in this collection is \u2018Days of 87,\u2019 which begins, \u2018You by the door before me,\/ Tall, unshaven, arms at your side,\/\/ Oversized duffle by your feet.\/ I stare at the ironing board, unable\/\/ To speak. My fingers unfold the shirt\u2019s\/ collar before trailing it with an iron.\u2019 Of course, to compare \u2018Days of 87\u2019 with \u2018The Heft upon your leaving\u2019 is not to compare like with like exactly.  And it might appear that I\u2019m suggesting the plain-speaking of the former is somehow better than the metaphor of the latter. But the former feels a little more democratic and open, than \u2018The Heft upon your leaving,\u2019 where metaphor doesn\u2019t always feel earned. <\/p>\n<p>There are other lovely poems where there is much more sense of balance, and where Vang feels in charge of her craft, as in \u2018Gray Vestige,\u2019 which describes the finding the body of a humpback whale upon a beach, \u2018Soon, you will\/\/ be taken, your salty oils,\/ fragment of sea-frosted spine.\/ Take every sinew adrift where\/\/ barnacles splayed pectoral\/ fins, your mammal tissue\/ putrefied into aquatic skin.\u2019 Here, Vang\u2019s use of the second person in direct address to the corpse of the whale feels earned and achieved;  the transformations, of \u2018sea-frosted spine\u2019 or \u2018putrefied into aquatic skin\u2019 seem robust and right.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, this is a debut volume which has its successes and poems which don\u2019t feel quite so solid; but this is ever the case with a first book. What seems absolutely certain is that here is a poet with a real subject matter and the technique to mine that subject matter in consistent and interesting ways.<\/p>\n<h5>Ian Pople<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mai Der Vang, Afterland, (Graywolf Press, $16.00). If the Hmong peoples of Laos have any presence on this side of the Atlantic, it may be in the unfortunate environment of Clint Eastwood\u2019s film Gran Torino, described by Timeout as the \u2018ultimate \u201cget off my lawn\u201d movie.\u2019 In that film, Eastwood\u2019s grouchy character forms a relationship [&hellip;]<\/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":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mai Der Vang, Afterland, 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=7628\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, (Graywolf Press, $16.00). If the Hmong peoples of Laos have any presence on this side of the Atlantic, it may be in the unfortunate environment of Clint Eastwood\u2019s film Gran Torino, described by Timeout as the \u2018ultimate \u201cget off my lawn\u201d movie.\u2019 In that film, Eastwood\u2019s grouchy character forms a relationship [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-06-08T12:45:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-06-08T12:45:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/2ir1wyb.png\" \/>\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=\"4 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=7628\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628\",\"name\":\"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-06-08T12:45:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-06-08T12:45:33+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7628#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, 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":"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, 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=7628","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","og_description":"Mai Der Vang, Afterland, (Graywolf Press, $16.00). 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