It’s a room full of silence and repressed scream. Lee Soho’s poetry collection, Catcalling, translated dazzingly by So J. Lee pulls me to that room.
The book starts with Kyungjin’s room and an origin of sisterhood: “I was born but somehow you were born too. From one to two. We crumple ourselves into the cramped stroller.” Their lives enmeshed, no no no, more like embroiled. “Fearing the gaze of strangers we […] each other,” and the poetry is blurred, shaking. What a title. What a form. What an image. Still in Kyungjin’s home, this relationships called family is a spider web. “I already knew about the abstraction of death / Now / the only way I can talk about myself without mentioning family / is by making excuses //” Affection is not automatic. Blood is incomparable to water. Blood is water mixed with more solid substances and lumps and bits and bites of flesh.
Lee Soho, in her conversation with Soje, confessed: “I like writing and reading stories about families. The family is the smallest social unit and the only one individuals can’t choose to meet, which is why it’s the earliest point of conflict. [laughs] I read the excerpt you sent me, and I’d like to read more. A contradictory pair of adjectives – affectionate and dispassionate – seems to best suit what I read.” And so the conflict goes. Family and romance beaten by patriarchal pressure.
The book is a “Meditation On Family 1” — “We / skipskipped / like stones / on water / The chunk of us we couldn’t flush / rose / to the surface //” But it is also an invitation to dwell in the unsentimental discomfort of domesticity. Home is not a safe place, nor a safe space, nor a safety. It’s “Narrow, Even More Cramped, and Rather Conscious.” A social and affective gulf needs to be articulated. “February 27 / While my little sister journals / I write a poem about an unfamiliar us / Yet another poem where we’re squared into / us //”
The poetry becomes like a gun.
Extended Reading:
Nik Setiadarma 