Book Review

On Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen: Poetry in Review

Ghost Of—a visually stunning debut collection by American poet Diana Khoi Nguyen—pulls its reader into an experience of longing, absence, and exploration well before the first page is revealed. The cover of the book presents a photograph from the I’m Not There series by Pol Ubeda, which centers a human-shaped shadow looming across a tennis court beside a pair of slide-on shoes that reside unoccupied where the owner of the shadow ought to be. The title of the collection sits at the back of the court, the words embodying the fragmented eeriness of the image, Ghost Of: a refusal to produce consolation through definition (ghost of who) and an invitation to accompany Nguyen on a journey of determining how this refusal can function as a tool for grieving and perhaps, finding solace in the incomprehensible.

Just passed the table of contents, the introduction to Nguyen’s poetic artistry awaits. Easily overlooked as vacant, the page is covered top to bottom with variations of the name Oliver (elver, oliver, o, o, ver, el). The font is small and ghostly grey, creating a barely noticeable halftone which only slightly effects the appearance of the paper. This, and the boy-shaped space left blank in the top right corner, hint to the collection’s innovative exploration of that which exists in absence. The poems and images in the following pages act as lyrics to a noiselessly thunderous song, made poignant with profound honesty surrounding the family trauma which ignited Nguyen’s exploration.

Six years before the publication of Ghost of and two years before his suicide, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s brother Oliver crept through their family home in the secrecy of night. Using an x-acto knife, he removed himself from each of the family photos, carefully returning each frame to its original location after his self-removal. These edited images lingered, seemingly unnoticed by his parents, as a physical manifestation of his family’s inability to confront generational trauma, one which decorated the family home for the rest of his life. After his death, the manifestation became a metaphor in afterimage: the dichotomy between the historic truth within the original (unscathed) family portraits and the present-day truth that lies in the empty space of the edited portraits. Ghost of originated within this dichotomy, Nguyen deciding to use the tragic spaces left by her brother’s acts of rebellion as opportunity to explore her family’s shared grief.

Finding catharsis within the constraints of empty space, Nguyen encounters an entryway into the unintelligible grief trapped within her. These places, borne by Oliver, offer themselves as exploratory safe-spaces for Nguyen to unravel the ambiguous and volatile truth of trauma—it shapeshifts and manifests differently in each of us, burrowing unnoticed into neglected facets of human experience. Her ability to unearth grief eventually evolves passed the confines of space left by her brother, giving way to wider boundaries of exploration, such as lyrical poetry on an open page, the rectangular form of a photograph, or the shape of a family heirloom. Across the pages, emptiness becomes tangible, the form of each poem becoming just as important as the meaning behind the words. In the first of three poems titled “Gyotaku”, Nguyen uses the borders of an oval picture frame to explore the impact of absence. Five ovals center the page. Three carry images of children, one frame remains empty, and the fifth is filled with poetry:

sound itself

can be a form of v

iolence escapable only

in death it passes through

walls it rushes in it pierces

but does not touch—a victi

m bears no marks on his bod

y, the body moved by sound,

moved to leave it leaves no tr

ace; there are two sisters, wh

o are the two sisters—null

at the intersection of his

music and his violence,

it saturates a space, a

udire, obaudire,

stay

These words bring the root of Nguyen’s theoretical exploration into focus: sound itself can be a form of violence and the absence of sound can be equally forceful, a concept illustrated by ‘two sisters’ made null, unwillingly transformed into ‘the two sisters’ at the absence of the of the brother.

            Generous candor and unapologetic frankness solidify the spirit within Ghost of as one which sings to the complex depths of each member of humanity, defining us as dissimilar entities who share in inherent human experience (death, pain, loss, love) in intrinsically individual ways, a song that society has long prohibited us from examining by threats of the label ‘taboo’.  This act of radical openness reveals an untapped source for connection available to humankind: organic individualism resides in us all and willfully ignoring individualism in favor of the comfort of sameness is an act of violence. An erasure of ourselves.

            It is fitting considering Nguyen’s affinity for the contradiction between sameness and individuality, that she would pull inspiration from other poets to illustrate her individuality. These works of inspiration are affectionately acknowledged at the end of the book, perhaps as an act of admitting to the homogeneity in our originality.  Among these acknowledgements, Nguyen names Tessa Rumsey’s The Return Message as an influential part in creating her poem Reprise. In this poem, Nguyen writes, “Loneliness, unremarkable weather? Last night before you my features darkened from adrenaline, from that/ Which darkens the flesh of prey. Never have I felt guilty about anything I eat. Unaccommodating—/ As they say in restaurants and relationships—for the preference of others. We who gather shift to let/ Each other pass to prevent the body from abrading further. His skin against the fabric where he died// He tore himself free/ the mist dusted oaks are fixed and unseeing until someone sees them—/ And in the aftermath the brother simply—flourished. The trees simply—bloomed. The field dyed massicot,/ Raw chrysanthemums hammering in mist until the mist turned snow with petals. For what purpose/ Do I seek love? What is the end of the world like—are we pennants in a gale murmuring amongst ourselves—/ Of mere being: cilia and sinew—tell me that what we lost as collateral is also a gift.”

                  Quiet brilliance lies beneath Nguyen’s words, white space and unspoken questions violently examining loss with hushed urgency. Her thoughts are fleeting yet impactful, perhaps to correspond with the experience of grief. She is unafraid throughout the book to explore parts of herself she doesn’t yet understand, such as guilt and anger. This occurs in the line, “Never have I felt guilty about anything I eat/ Unaccommodating—/ As they say in restaurants and relationships—for the preference of others.” The words put American norms (restaurants and relationships) into question, wrestling with the detrimental yet ambiguous toxicity within our society as it relates to accommodating others. Humanity is accommodating when socially acceptable, humanity is not accommodating when a person is processing trauma, even if that accommodation means saving a life.   

Reading Ghost of is an unforgettable event, one which holds the hand of each individual with brilliant care and leads them to discovery through multiple senses, allowing inherent differences to fill the empty space on the page organically. The poetry and images bring connection in moments when the reader identifies glimpses of themselves, while also provoking recognition toward the inherent differences that cause that connection to ebb and flow. It is impossible to relate to every word in Diana Khoi Nguyen’s elegy, as it is impossible to relate to every word written by any human, but possibility lies with every reader in what exists in the absence of understanding. Perhaps then, the choice to evade consolation by finishing the phrase Ghost of is less a refusal to define and rather a summons to explore the myriad of ghosts which silently haunt all of humanity. Possibility for consolation resides in the belief that life exists within absence, but possibility is just that— pos·si·bil·i·ty | noun

·       a thing that may happen or be the case.

·       the state or fact of being likely or possible; likelihood.

·       a thing that may be chosen or done out of

several possible alternatives.

·       unspecified qualities of a promising nature; potential.