The 39 poems in Willie Lin's graceful debut, Conversation Among Stones, adopt the language of art, nature, and religion while musing on belonging and fate.
Lin, a Kundiman Fellow born in Beijing and now based in Chicago, commemorates Tiananmen Square in "Brief History of Exile," in which a man sees "the afterimage of the night sky burning/ from his room by the bridge, the tanks and young men/ riding into the city square at last...." The notion of exile is a link to the exquisite ekphrastic poem "After Masaccio's The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden," where Eve's wailing face depicts "sound as wound." Christian theology resurfaces in later vocabulary: "Apocrypha," "Eternity," and "Numinous." Philosophy is represented by three poems titled "Apologia" (defense of beliefs) and another three titled "Teleology" (purpose).
Lin's meditations, which include dreams and elegies, can be melancholy. "Too prone to darkness/ all my life I have asked for a task,/ a purpose to survive me," she admits. However, she equates resignation with an acceptance of reality: "given stone, we should love/ stone, given fire,/ we should learn to love fire." The collection's title is apt for the exchange of ideas--not just the poet's within herself as she ponders memory and identity, but also engagement with other poets by borrowing individual lines and echoing Shakespeare.
Lin employs alliteration, internal rhyme, and wordplay: "my head like a calyx, and the corolla, whose corollary/ is language." Birds, insects, leaves, and snow compose the natural imagery in this varied and accomplished first collection. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck