We’ve never met in this existence,
never scuffed our skin to the same
sheet of velvet. A mirror reflects
every unopened door, invitation
to fall through.
(from “Animal,” page 5)
The saola is a critically endangered animal whose rare sightings have occurred around the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. The first sighting was in 1992 and the last photograph of the saola was in 2013. It is considered the “unicorn” of Southeast Asia.
The saola as a being and a symbol holds a remarkable position in the ecologic arch of the region, with complex connections to culture and the environment. In Primordial, it is this symbol that informs Mai Der Vang’s latest forays into describing the Hmong people, and reflecting on immigration and the qualities of phasing in and out of the contemporary world as a private individual.
I cannot keep you safe.
How to welfare to now to reverence to keep you safe.
How to revenant to remedy to keep you safe.
How to natural to sanctuary to now to keep you safe.
You, safe.
You, safe.
(from “Chart of Immediate Threats,” page 39)
A follow-up to the monumental collection Yellow Rain, Mai Der Vang’s latest work is comparably compelling. Her latest book continues the practice of documentary poetics: exploring and utilizing research, news, and mementos to cultivate and curate stories and truths.
It is a book of eight sections linked together, forming threads in a singular web. Each section feels independent, yet they are all consciously connected. The book as a collective takes shape as an ecological form, emphasizing relationships between ideas, beings, and perspectives across themes, symbols, and images.
Say to the saola: here is an echo
of the human you’ve left behind.
(from “Death in Captivity, a Surrender,” page 13)
The poet starts with saola, examining the fleeting and hidden being, whose existence is secret, whose presence is truth and othered at once. The poet cherishes the saola and yet is profoundly curious of it: how it adapts, how it finds itself, how it finds its own possible existence among the rest of the world.
The poet explores the specificities of a region scarred and damaged by bombs and war. The poet explores a place that exists alongside the journeys and stories of the Hmong people: both near (in Laos and Vietnam) and far (the diaspora).
Light is witness. Light is prehistory,
Blueprint of vibration shifting through
all directions of time.
(from “I Understand This Light to Be My Home,” page 65)
The book yields a complexity of connections between the solitary animal’s behavior and seemingly-mythic and seemingly-extinct stature and the complexities of cultural and personal backgrounds. The Hmong who left their homelands as refugees, or who were killed in conflict, contain parallels to the saola, who exists as documented and yet may also be extinct at the same time.
What is it to be alive, at one point in time and in the present, the poet explores in her poems? What is it to be considered real, to be considered true, and what is real and true? These seemingly philosophical questions have countless raw, visceral, and emotional layers when looking at the entirety of a people, a culture, and the transformations of both.
Then I see my hands and feet as they
move into the space.
I see what sky I hold, what green I touch,
what space I crowd, what smog I spill,
what fuel I drink, what bruise I leave
behind.
(from “Injury after Another,” page 142)
Taken a step further, Mai Der Vang explores her own position and relationship to the saola’s struggles and triumphs, as she considers her relationship to land, to people, to self. The occasional bringing forward of the self feels like a form of captivation; the poet’s reflections offer a formality that foils elusiveness, even for a brief moment.
Like the rare photographs of the saola, these rare moments of reflection on being and presence are profound and yet offer mystique and mystery over certitude. As a result, the reader is brought into the cycle of their own cathartic spiral, invited to be present and curious, if only for a moment. The book’s resulting effect is phenomenal and unforgettable.
Sacred traveler in the middle of transcendence
not a unicorn but a saola not apparition but actual.
I wander uncertainty in my steps to picture
you as you are a beast timeless as folklore
made to share in this humanity.
(from “Otherworldly,” page 22)
I read the entirety of Primordial in a single sitting, dreaming of a world I could not know from a perspective I could not know, but in reading through Mai Der Vang’s channeled sentiments and sentience, I felt more whole, more alive, and more open to a world of incompletes and ethereals and unknowns.
This book, constructed out of a poet’s compassion and commitment to receiving and processing, is a conduit for reflection, empathy, and hope. The saola’s existence, as with all existence, offers us paths through, always.
Some say [extinction] is inevitable, some things are required [to] die and never return. Redwood, may you ever root. Hmong, may you [live]. Saola, may you go and go.
(from “Origin,” page 129)
Greg Bem lived in Seattle for 13 years before moving to Spokane, where he has resided since 2023. He is a community college librarian and union organizer, small press publisher, poet and performer, and book reviewer, among other things. His reviews are linked on his website, and can be found published here in International Examiner as well as in Rain Taxi, North of Oxford, Exacting Clam, and Another Chicago Magazine.
