Forms and Features of Poetry: Jess Yuan's Craft Talk on Pain

The poems each titled Craft Talk on Pain by Jess Yuan from the book "Slow Render."

You may purchase "Slow Render," by Jess Yuan here.

A book that I think gladly speaks in conversation with other works operating around the metaphysical concept of the photograph like Barthes, Sontag; Yuan’s “Slow Render,” operates on both a scale of the poem as a capture, as well as the capture as a form that can be manipulated or whose boundaries can be flexibly defined.

Loved this intelligent and compelling review by Chantine Akiyama Poh.

The poet condemns contemporary society’s late realization of the harm that human industry has caused the earth’s ecosystems, and this first poem frames the first section’s theme of questioning the antiquated binary of man versus nature. With a documentarian impulse akin to that of Inger Christensen’s Alphabet, the poet outlines humanity’s rampant exploitation of nature and its permeation into human interactions, even as she invites us to find a new relationship to those with whom we share the earth. Man should no longer be the center of the universe.