Born in California's Central Valley, Brynn Saito offers a second collection of poems (after The Palace of Contemplating Departure) that explores both her past and the landscape that defined it. Power Made Us Swoon's poems describe the Manzanar World War II Japanese internment camp where her grandparents met (" 'She went in with one name and came out with another,' says my cousin."). It is a desolate place of hot summers, cold winters and frequent dust storms that reflects a tragic period in her family's history--and a nadir of United States history. But in her time at Manzanar, Saito collects a small rock that becomes a zen-like voice in "Lifting the Stone," fulfilling her quest to understand--reassuring her to "go on/ blindly, seeking a life with life at the center."
Saito's mining of her history also includes more recent events. She describes car wrecks, roadside melon stands, romances and a childhood in the rural outskirts of Fresno. In "Getting Clear," she reaches for meaning in the natural world of migrating birds, asking, "How does a family learn to fly/ like that? How do they know/ the best seasons for leaving?" In other poems, the voice of her "Woman Warrior" leads her through urban life with "bridges lit with streetlights/ and smokers" and dim bars where she "found love, lost it, lost it again." These are strong poems that don't shy from the big questions. Perhaps her "W.W." says it best: "When you're a warrior it doesn't/ matter/ you must always/ wake at dawn." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.