Maps for Migrants and Ghosts by Luisa A. Igloria
It has been a long time since I have read a book as unforgettable as Maps for Migrants and Ghosts of Luisa A. Igloria. Luisa brings her signature sharp, shrewd, exquisite language about her personal and family histories and marks how immigration leads to world-wide revolution. Moreover, notable mention of different weathers in poems creates a realistic aspect and looks quite magnificent.
Drastic changes in climate and timings witnessed throughout the world are the wondrous virtue of “Song of Meridians.” The newspaper seems to contain different pictures stating diversity in stories but “a difference of one letter between one state of being and another.”
It’s spring, but in other places it’s not-
yet-spring. It’s dry, or wet with
monsoon, or it is why-is-there-still-snow-
on-the-ground.
Sentimental, frenzy, and exultation are the very words to elucidate “The Heart’s Every Heave.” For a while, it puts upfront the questions about the future and the present.
...holds its breath, lurches from platform
to crowded lobby. Say elegy, insistence,
not blank stare. Say danger and defiance.
Not shoulder shrug, not fold over.
In “Portraits,” at the start, nostalgia evolves out of every word therein. The first look of the poem seems quite evocative. The poet ‘thinking back’ mentions a green old bungalow which was the president’s summer house then. The wonderful moments of her life she has added make the poem more entrancing, “I tried to capture their likenesses on canvas, /working from a photograph—my smiling mother/on the left, wearing coral lipstick”.
How naturally the poet describes the brief existence of cabbages rimmed with the crust of ice! A cold weather condition in “North” supported by vivid effects such as “the frozen pellets dropped by goats” and “How wine made from fermented rice” soothes the reader’s mind and forces to imagine a scene of such exquisiteness.
Most of the poems in this poetic collection contain accompanying sweetness, an arch sentimentality. The art of lucidity that Luisa has shown in this book is flawless. She is adept with poetic economy and finding perfect endings to her poetry. I wish for this book that it may exhilarate every reader. All the best!
Rochak Agarwal