Oceanic: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Oceanic: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Reflection by: Michelle Nicol 

The blue cover of the book and the title Oceanicreally helped set the tone of the book well for me.  The way that Nezhukumatathil, creates such vivid imagery as I read through the book was really amazing for my super visual brain. In the Self-Portrait as Scallopshe writes, “Let me see your shadow feather across my hundred blue eyes. I probably won’t even notice the sea stars circling around me ready to nibble and foam for days.” This is just one of the countless examples of some of the most visually creating descriptions I have ever read!  Reading through the book made seeing the child stepping out of a fire in the poem Bengal Tigerso effortless for me. The colors that burst out at me while I read was also something I found came very naturally, I saw lots and lots of blue, so many different references to the ocean and the water, waterfalls. I am in love with the ocean, so this made reading quite relaxing and brought me frequently to the safe space I visit when I do guided meditations with my therapist. 

Some of the poems stood out for other more triggering reasons such as the poem Two Moths.  I have read and reread this poem now quite a few times and it is just so heavy and very descriptive about the horrors that some children are subjected to, children who can never just enjoy what it is like to be a twelve-year-old.  As a mother of a teenager this poem really put my spirit in places of such deep gratitude, I get the joy of just being able to hold space for her daily melt downs due to a hair being misplaced while she lays down her edges.  The lines that stood out the most for me in this poem haunt me, and the format in which Nezhukumatathil chose to use really press down the severity, the hurt, the realness of these young girls’ trauma. “One hour- One hour- One hour. And if she cries afterward her older sister will cover it up. Will rim the waterline of her eyes” 

The diverse graphic images that each poem provided really varied and were unique to each poem, like in the poem The Pepper King Returns, she writes “his son winter soup full of potatoes and cumin, the boy will eat and eat and clink his spoon until you hear something like bells.” Not only can I picture the little boy in this poem eating some delicious soup, I can also smell the cumin and hear the bells in the background of my mind as a result of the words written on the page. In the poem Flowers at the Taj MahalNezhukumatathil writes, “I question you, poppy, paper-thin bloom and spindly rubber neck.” and I so easily can see everything that follows, from the poppy flower to the happy rats in cheese, to the shadows and the marbleizing wet eyes of the tourists.

I very much enjoyed reading this book, I one day hope to write I ways that allow such freedom away from the task of actually reading to understand and move in a direction with my own descriptions that can foster such freedom, and imagery with such a prevalence of truth.