{"id":557,"date":"2020-05-15T14:00:58","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T14:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?p=557"},"modified":"2020-05-15T14:00:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T14:00:58","slug":"re-visioning-exile-review-of-afterwardness-by-mimi-khalvati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?p=557","title":{"rendered":"‘Re-visioning Exile’, Review of ‘Afterwardness’ by Mimi Khalvati"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My review of ‘Afterwardness’ by Mimi Khalvati reproduced here, was published in The High Window<\/a> in January, 2020. <\/p>\n

Mimi Khalvati\u2019s<\/a> new book is a sustained series of meditations on the theme of exile. For its eloquent deployment of form and the depth of its emotional excavation, I consider it poetry of the highest order. <\/p>\n

Though autobiographical, the book never gives us personal history for its own sake, but always in the service of its theme: life in the perennial \u2018afterwardness\u2019 of exile. <\/p>\n

The fifty-six sonnets \u2013 the Italian form invokes Petrarch\u2019s \u2018Rime Sparse\u2019, his great document of unappeasable longing \u2013 begin with \u2018Questions\u2019. A child, in flight on a plane, discovers itself to be \u2018smaller than you were\u2026Something has made you shrink\/or else something has made the seatback grow\u2019, travelling \u2018away from all you know\u2019 as the sky darkens. The child, with its unknown companion are \u2018the only ones not gone or disappearing\u2019, and it struggles \u2018to push the feelings down, the questions\/the stillborn questions never to be answered\u2019. This literal flight from home is disorienting, hallucinatory \u2013 to be up in the air with no familiar ground, nothing to rely on but a \u2018seat-belt\u2019 of trust. <\/p>\n

The autobiographical poems here, rich in themselves, establish a perspective from which to view other lives in exile \u2013 those of the \u2018Dreamers\u2019, under threat in Trump\u2019s USA, in the poem of that title, who arrived as children with \u2018two hundred words in their vocabulary\u2019, their \u2018first languages, half-formed, dropped at a border\u2019; or the eleven-year old boy from Aleppo in the heartbreaking title poem, \u2018Afterwardness\u2019, \u2018 whose eyes hold only things no longer there\/\u2013 a citadel, a moat, safe rooms of shadow\/\u2018afterwardness\u2019 in his thousand yard stare\u2019, his mother tongue, and the memories inscribed in it, \u2018lost like me in air\u2019; or the girl in \u2018Hide and Seek\u2019, \u2018backed to a wall\/shrinking on a dirt floor, hugging her knees\u2019, unsure which is worst \u2013 to find, to be found, or be \u2018never found at all\u2019.<\/p>\n

Four poems capture the struggle to recreate the world in another language. In \u2018Translation\u2019, exiled children swap collections of words: \u2018I\u2019ll give you parandeh, you give me bird\u2019. But what\u2019s lost is a shaping milieu, a cultural home: \u2018\u2026what if, whistling in some foreign treetop, \/\/parandeh has long since flown out of mind\/back to its own kind, never to return?\u2019. In \u2018Handwriting\u2019, the painstaking practice of \u2018joined-up writing\u2019 allows the self and its articulation to become more joined up. Letters are \u2018the scaffolding and ark of spoken speech\u2019. The child might encounter \u2018strange idioms that make the mind grow numb\/but knowing how to write them helps you hear\u2019. Still, not quite knowing how to play a language game, in \u2018Dictation\u2019, leads the young writer into confusion \u2018Like a bumblebee on a wild rampage,\/stumbling against the sense that otherwise\/ran as smooth as honey across my page\u2019. \u2018Elocution\u2019 produces an adolescent crush so ecstatic that the elocution teacher, though \u2018squat as a toad\/in twinset and tweeds\u2019, becomes \u2018my oracle\u2019.<\/p>\n

In so many of these poems, the images frame and enunciate the character of an exile\u2019s life with tremendous resonance. The recurrent, deeply traditional formal design of the Petrarchan sonnet grounds the collection and provides a containing experience of consistency and reliability that contrasts with all the disorientation, the displacement, the endless efforts to make a new home that never quite yield a secure sense of belonging. <\/p>\n

Longing for the lost world of home is visceral. In \u2018The Introvert House\u2019 (p16), the speaker wonders if her habitual way of arranging furniture results from \u2018workings in the bloodstream, some residue\/in subliminal memory of windows\/that look forever inward, galaxies\/that spin on carpets, geometric rows\/\/ of turquoise tiles ablaze with symmetries\/inherent in physics; eyvans, porticos\/of gardens brought indoors; a Sufi\u2019s verses.\u2019 <\/p>\n

A key poem, for me is \u2018Scripto Inferior\u2019, which tells us that to know your story allows you \u2018to understand not only who you are and where you come from\u2019, but the very \u2018nature\/ of story, how to prime a palimpsest\/for all successive stories\u2019. I think of the whole collection as a palimpsest founded on \u2018the underwriting\u2019 of the poet\u2019s \u2018own life story\u2019. The palimpsest image brings out the importance of storytelling in constituting the life of the self, perhaps more important in the lives of those for whom \u2018some imaginary homeland\/ is all you know, shall ever know of home\u2019. <\/p>\n

Thus, one re-working of the theme of forgotten past re-appearing in the present gives us \u2018Background Music\u2019 and a companion poem, \u2018Background Music (ii)\u2019. Here are not \u2018workings in the bloodstream\u2019 but the \u2018background music\u2019 of abandonment trauma that disrupts the peaceful act of reading in a caf\u00e9 and you are \u2018torn away\u2026to fall as Tosca falls, defences fall\u2019, and \u2018your heart breaks open a dungeon door\/\/and griefs like prisoners\u2026bestir themselves\u2019. In \u2018My Mother\u2019s Lighter\u2019, the poet \u2018Half-sentimental, half-dispassionate\/and with no true attachment to or knowledge\/of my own history\u2019 plays idly with the lighter, and sees \u2018the same flame, its root invisible\u2026that she\u2019d have seen\u2019. It \u2018flares in the sunlight\u2019 until it becomes too hot to handle.<\/p>\n

Though there are many \u2018stories\u2019 here (and so many poems I wish I had space to quote), the \u2018afterwardness\u2019 that gives the book its title remains its unifying subject. This is a collection in which I have been grateful to immerse myself. It can be dipped into, but gains from repeated reading as a formally satisfying sequence. In the final poem, \u2018Vapour Trails\u2019, we come full circle from the dramatic opening flight of \u2018Questions\u2019. In this concluding sonnet, an observer \u2013 now \u2018down on earth\u2019, watches \u2018silver bullet-nosed\u2019 jets and their contrails \u2018like spinal x-rays\u2019 \u2013 images that suggest a magical treatment for a life-changing injury. A valedictory sestet gives us a gloss on the poet\u2019s story, and at the same time describes her moving and brilliant series of poems:<\/p>\n

It only takes a trigger, a single flight
\nin childhood, for example, early trauma,
\nto stretch the bare bones of the aftermath<\/p>\n

into a lyric void beyond the finite
\nand knowable, a via negativa
\ncruising at altitude on plumes of breath. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My review of ‘Afterwardness’ by Mimi Khalvati reproduced here, was published in The High Window in January, 2020. Mimi Khalvati\u2019s new book is a sustained series of meditations on the theme of exile. For its eloquent deployment of form and the depth of its emotional excavation, I consider it poetry of the highest order. Though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"'Re-visioning Exile,' My Review of the marvellous'Afterwardness' by Mimi Khalvati. Published also in The High Window @highwindowpress in January 2020","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[13,14],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views-and-reviews","tag-mimi-khalvati","tag-the-high-window"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7DaEn-8Z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":562,"url":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?p=562","url_meta":{"origin":557,"position":0},"title":"Review of ‘The Air Year’ by Caroline Bird","author":"afterthebeginning","date":"May 17, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"My Review of 'The Air Year' the new poetry collection (Carcanet) by Caroline Bird reproduced here, was also published in 'The High Window' in May 2020. In her exhilarating how-to essay, \u2018The Discipline of Getting Lost: On the Impossibility of Poems\u2019 (in \u2018Craft\u2019, ed. R,Dastidar, Nine Arches Press, 2019), Caroline\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Views and Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Views and Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnwheway.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/314gbACiSL._SX311_BO1204203200_.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4,"url":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?p=4","url_meta":{"origin":557,"position":1},"title":"How to Write a Glosa","author":"afterthebeginning","date":"June 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever imagine that a medieval Spanish poetic form could help you get to grips with poems you admire? 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In Bill Herbert's manual, Writing Poetry, there's an interview with Sean O'Brien about the composition of O'Brien's poem, 'Cousin Coat'.\u00a0 We learn from this that early drafts were written not in the rhymed iambic pentameters readers\u00a0know, but in free verse.\u00a0Why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "poetics"","block_context":{"text":"poetics","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"41al+TUI0cL._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnwheway.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/41alTUI0cL._SX324_BO1204203200_-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":663,"url":"https:\/\/www.johnwheway.com\/?p=663","url_meta":{"origin":557,"position":3},"title":"In the Shape of a Hammock: Lyric, Flash, and Poetic Design","author":"afterthebeginning","date":"August 13, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Poetry occurs in both prose and verse. 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