A gift of a dozen blue eggs. My father cracks one over the pan and provokes its yolk with a fork. Come and see—it doesn’t tear. I mutter a prayer: may my life be as tenacious.
Asterism is the 2024 Dorset Prize winner, which is given to a full-length poetry manuscript each year by Tupelo Press. The title of Ae Hee Lee’s debut collection is defined on its Notes page as something that “refer[s] to a pattern of stars observed by the naked eye or to a group of three asterisks (⁂).” Typographically, an asterism is often used as a type of dinkus (great word), which illustrates an intentional omission or break in the text. So, in one word, Lee has perfectly summarized the heart of her book; a work that is at once about place, history, and where one can be either emptied or filled (language, stomachs) depending on where you are in space and time.
Indeed, in these pages, things come in threes. In the poem that opens this book, “Self-Portrait as Portrait,” Lee sees parts of herself as a goose with three wings, where each limb represents “one for ourselves, one for the world, / one for strangeness.” Her multiple selves exist inwardly, outwardly, and in some state beyond the other two. In “Self Portrait as Mother,” Lee explores the fractal nature of childhood and motherhood for a woman, wherein she exists as child mothered and potentially as a child’s mother. However, the most notable triad in Asterism is the locations Lee inhabits. The bulk of action takes place in Trujillo, Peru, where Lee grew up; in Daegu, South Korea, where her family is from; and in the American heartland, where she spends her adult years.
I will say that I know very little about Korean culture, and even less about Peru. I’m not even up on what’s going on out in Wisconsin. However, I really enjoyed how Lee both orients herself in space as well as explores the nebulousness of existence at any one place at any one time. Her unique perspective clearly sees borders and edges everywhere throughout these poems but she anchors herself to feelings rather than her immediate positioning.
Because she’s not truly “of” any of these places, the author often becomes astral. In “Self-Study Through Daily Sustenance,” she writes “My mother says she likes watching how each bite makes moons rise out of my eyes.” Later, in “On Borders,” there is a moment where “I marvel at how a body can inhabit / worlds at a time.” In the same way that the asterism has two stars that form a foundation for the one that floats above it, Lee creates this quantum reality where many versions of ourselves exist simultaneously.
As Lee plays with concepts of near vs. far, the role of food and language acts as a grounding elements for identity. In particularly impactful passage about her mother cooking, she writes “Jeong, she teaches me, is love / that comes with time, similar to the process of fermentation, / the slow dyeing of brined leaves.” As we encounter words that we might be unable to read in Korean or in Spanish, there is a momentary realization that there are any parts of a person we might never understand. At the same time, Lee’s use of food reminds us of a universal need we all experience.
This is a beautiful collection that looks at life up-close and from an astronomical distance at the same time. It creates a dizzying, disorienting effect that snares us back to earth with lovely language rooted in universal experiences. Particular gems in this collection include: “Dream Series of My Mother Making Kimchi in Trujillo”; “Upon Practicing a Second Language”; “Home Remedies”; “Grounding Exercise”; and “Hyu :: In-Between.” I’m excited to read more from Lee in the future.
I could savor the second a violet
turned violent in my radiant mouth.
Asterism, by Ae Hee Lee. North Adams, Massachusetts: Tupelo Press, February 2024. 80 pages. $19.95, paper.
Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate NY. She is the author of the chapbook Dangerous Women (dancing girl), the play Kinderkrankenhaus (Sagging Meniscus), and the novel The Book of the Last Word. Her shorter writing has appeared in FENCE, Sleepingfish, Exacting Clam, and others. Her play Kinderkrankenhaus will see its second production at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn in September 2023.More: jesibender.com.
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Heavy Feather Review 