asianamlitfans | Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan's Shadow Mountain and Bear, Diamonds and Crane

I came across Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan's first book of poetry by happenstance while browsing the Housing Works Bookstore's online inventory. It's been almost a decade since I visited the bookstore in New York City, but I was happy to be able to purchase some used books from them from afar.

Kageyama-Ramakrishnan has two books of poems out: Shadow Mountain (2008) and Bear, Diamonds and Crane (2011), both from Four Way Books. (

stephenhongsohn wrote a thoughtful review of the press's Asian American poetry offerings at Lantern Review a few years ago, including about Shadow Mountain.)

As Professor Sohn points out in his review, Kageyama-Ramakrishnan's debut book is interesting as an example of how the experience of Japanese American internment in WWII has echoed across generations. The multi-part poem "Shadow Mountain" in Part II of the book traces this legacy through a series of ruminations on various emotional, physical, and memorial aspects of internment. A few lines sketch out the child's limited perspective on how her father deals with this past:

When I stepped out of the car and stood there—
before the vertical and angular pillar,
smaller than the Washington Monument, white
with strokes of Japanese calligraphy,
when someone pointed and said, Your father lived here,
when I saw the trace of the block's rectangle,
when I stepped over the flaked remains of obsidian,
ants as large as my fingernails, when my uncle aimed
his camera at us, when my father tightened and said nothing,

In these lines, the child's first visit to Manzanar includes a series of little observations, a catalog of what is left of Manzanar that only hints at the traumatic significance of the site for an entire generation of Japanese Americans.

One thing I find interesting is how this title poem comes in the center of the book, sandwiched between earlier poems which are focused more on familial and interpersonal subjects and the later poems that explore an even broader range of themes and poetic forms.

My favorite poem of the collection is perhaps the somewhat silly "Feline Reasoning," which explores the fickle and enigmatic nature of domestic cats. The descriptions of cat behavior and the history of cats adopted by the speaker of the poem get mapped onto a history of romantic relationships as well.

In luxury, it gnaws my boots,
shreds my sandals, my Japanese sandals,
strays,

tucks itself away,
in the closet or cupboard.

It likes my lover who is allergic to it.

In many ways, Bear, Diamonds and Crane reads like an extension of Kageyama-Ramakrishnan's first book. The poems have a similar lyrical style, and there is also a deliberate sequencing of poems in a few larger sections. As in the first collection, this second book covers a range of themes, from family histories to the Japanese American internment, from ruminations on the meanings of Japanese names and words to folk tales old and reimagined. Kageyama-Ramakrishnan also includes brief epigraphs for each of the five sections of the book, with quotations from writers David Mura, Maxine Hong Kinston, Hankuro Wada, Hisako Hibi, and Yei Theodora Ozaki (compiler of Japanese fairy tales).

I also noticed how many of the poems in the collection take as a title a place and date: "Haiku: Southern California, 1973," "Near Owens Valley, 1985," "Inglewood: Past Florence and Normandie, 1990." These poems focus on specific events, often hinting at the tragic or violent. In general, there is a lingering sense of sadness in the poems, with a number of poems touching on accidents and illnesses. "Tale of Hair for My Mother" beings:

I thought I was growing my hair
for a woman with sepsis
and breast cancer.

I now realize I grew each strand
for my mother, bundle
the width of my wrist,

weight I carried
for nine months.

The image is achingly beautiful--imagine the long hair grown to make a wig for someone undergoing chemotherapy and dealing with loss of hair. Wrap that image around that of pregnancy and carrying new life. The juxtaposition is startling.

Many of the poems about the younger generation of Japanese Americans focus on the melancholy of assimilation. "Cousins, 1983" begins:

They spent hours taping
their lids for the desired
lines, glued on lashes

that made them blink like
Disney characters.

The seemingly-innocent desire to turn to cosmetic facial changes caricatures these young cousins as they search for more Caucasian features on their own Japanese faces.

See also an interview with the author at the National Book Critics blog.