reading noguchi in alaska

So, I’m just gonna front with the fact that Heather already blew everything out of the water with her analysis of Noguchi’s first poem. Bam, woman. You’ve got a knack for that like whoa.


I’ve been looking at these poems while traveling this week & they’ve stuck with me, pulled at me at odd moments. I’ve read them so many times & in so many places that they’ve begun to seem like one extended narrative to me. The first three, obviously yes, but also the last two (on their own, or as a group of five). Since entering grad thesis land recently, I’ve begun thinking a lot about the shape of a book and how one constructs a book to stand on each of its individual poem-legs, but also to be able to move together as one larger animal. I was thinking about this while reading these poems; poems that Noguchi has definitely linked, but perhaps had little organizational control over in the instance of this (or any) anthology. It got me wondering about how flexible our work must be & yet how steadfast. I feel like I could spend a lifetime trying to master that balance on the page.


Back to the poems, themselves. When I read these first three poems, I see continuity physically, like a string to which each poem is clipped. They are pieces of laundry, sheets perhaps, pinned with precision to the line. Flapping in slow motion. Every time Noguchi tosses verbs around, I feel as if we are floating, dream-like, through the action. Kenji flexing his knees, diving deep into the couch cushions. I think a lot of this has to do with the veil that Heather is referencing in her post of this first poem, but also with the fact that Kenji seems to be occupying a very malleable space between young & grown. You can feel the bulge of innocence here, Noguchi makes it so full and rubbery you can practically touch Kenji’s imagination juxtaposed against the flexed nature of his body, bothered by responsibility. The line that this first poem is clipped to contains hyperbolic forces of nature that only a young boy crashing head-first into the discipline of accountability could reveal.


In the second poem, “From Rooftops, Kenji Takezo Throws Himself,” we get a better sense of this imagination, as if the poem titles are the boy’s own third-person narrator introducing his next daring act. There is less figurative curvature here and more subject-related roundness. Noguchi lets us see how Kenji has internalized the rotundity of his mind’s eye & it is his body that bounces, not the entire scene. His heart, his breath, all of these physical exchanges becomes parts of himself that he can own & learns how to own. Obviously, he’s still talking about wanting to be a surfer, but there is a shift between the first poem and the second that indicates more knowing, less hyperbole. Noguchi makes sure, especially in that last stanza, that we notice Kenji hasn’t lost any of his youthful passion, but the language has strengthened in ways that invoke confidence.


In the third poem, “The Ocean Inside Him,” I think we’ve hit transformation. Just as the poems have shortened in length, they have also tightened in control. We get to this poem and suddenly we’re not talking about waves anymore, we’re talking about all kinds of wave-like emotions. Noguchi sets us off early with the word “whitewash” in the second line, then let’s us gloss over lines like “the heavy life of the ocean,” and “it wasn’t funny, but he giggled.” Outside forces have invaded the bubble-like bliss of those earlier moments with the ironing board and I guess what I’m wondering is where is the rest of the laundry?