Meg Eden\u2019s landscape for \u201cDrowning in the Floating World\u201d is the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan and the following Fukushima nuclear disaster. The poems are populated by people who are fully realized in a few lines. It is through this close focus that the big picture emerges. Huge horrors cannot be processed all at once, and the small details make it all identifiable and real in a way that a camera pulled back would not be able to do.<\/p>
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In \u201cResponse to the Brother Who Wants to Move in After the Earthquake,\u201d the fear is palpable. \u201cYou are contaminated; \/ a power plant lives in you now. \/ There\u2019s already radiation in your skin, \/ and I can\u2019t risk you rubbing off on me.\u201d In \u201cPoem for the Sneakers Washing Onshore,\u201d Eden makes the scope of the tragedy more comprehensible in a simple way that grows on you with each line. \u201cwe are the feet of salarymen \/ & the feet of school girls \/ & the feet of tennis players \/ & the feet of arcade gamers\u2026\u201d Some poems come at you viscerally and will stick with you for a long time. These lines are from \u201cTsunami Girl.\u201d \u201cIt happened quite slowly: her pale flesh rotted, \/ slipping from nature, from her family\u2019s thoughts. \/ First, her face, then hands, and only at the very end, \/ her hair. Only then was she counted \/ collateral in a city filled with collateral.\u201d<\/p>
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Nothing is wasted in this writing. I can feel that every syllable, every comma, was thought out. Beauty and horror dance together in these poems, tied together by a felt humanity. I highly recommend this book.<\/p>
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Meg Eden\u2019s landscape for \u201cDrowning in the Floating World\u201d is the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan and the following Fukushima nuclear disaster. The poems are populated by people who are fully realized in a few lines. It is through this close focus that the big picture emerges. Huge horrors cannot be processed all at once, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,88],"tags":[109,108,106],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-on-the-pad","category-reviews","tag-megeden","tag-poetry-2","tag-review-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terricsimon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}