Yearling

The title of Mei-en’s debut, a term applied to an animal in its first or second year, suggests the collection’s deep interest in the body, and the unruly verve of the poems within. The collection is organized in three sections, and its interests “age” as the book progresses, with Mei-en’s confident and musical verse shining throughout. The poems are marked by an alliterative idiom and riddle-like playfulness, as in “Marvel by the morning, morning by the mile, mother,/ I was not wise,” or “Wife-beatered, bedroom burst with birds/ and sons.” The influence of fairy tales is evident, and Mei-en also reimagines and spins animal stories that take on the scale of myth. The poems are both elegiac and energetic, moving “like the half-great,/ sea-chewed halfgirls on the old merchant prows,” and full of memorable scenes, as when “stars slouch like fat coins in the mud.” She pulls that energy from strange and startling juxtapositions, as well as details that draw on ritual and rebellion: “I am here, at last, dressed in plain mustard and tiger,/ carrying on with my heart-claw and faulty calendar,/ the old fetishes—spit and spice and sea—loaded/ behind my teeth.” Texturally and sonically rich, Mei-en explores memory, loss, and place with dynamic flourishes. [em](Apr.) [/em]