Annie Kim

Into the Cyclorama Annie Kim

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Winner of the 2015 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Every history has its holes, every landscape its vanishing point. Fathers and brothers disappear. A bronze helmet winds across centuries from Olympia to Berlin to Seoul. Fish bones turn to thorns in the native tongue. In these poems that explore identity, family, and the hunger to know what can't be known, we discover both vividly recreated scenes and the rips in the canvas. We enter works like the 19th-century Gettysburg Cyclorama at the heart of this book, asking: What art can we make out of violence? What shape from loss? Like snow that leaves no trace in the photographed garden, INTO THE CYCLORAMA answers: Form is everything, even at its most transient. Gorgeous poems, rich with allusions to music, art, and history from Ancient Greece to the Korean War.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review INTO THE CYCLORAMA is an engaging collection that shows the effects of raw emotional power harnessed into thoughtfully arranged poetic form. Whether exploring the past, present, or future, Kim's work shows individual lives and separate events as a unified whole, not merely grasping a thin gold thread, but weaving it into part of a greater tapestry. What, to any other writer, might seem disjointed and unrelated become one through her pen.--Kevin Holton, Pleiades, Vol. 15.1 'When you are a child every door / is terrifying, ' she writes; 'You still haven't mastered the art / of how to turn the knob.' Kim has mastered this art through her poetry. INTO THE CYCLORAMA becomes an extended elegy, each turn creating a psychological path through grief.--Jennifer van Alstyne, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Vol. 22, No. 2